


Past and Future are lovers

by carxies



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mature for general theme of murder and some implied smut, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, a lot of fire talk and fire in general, and other canon warning such as mentions of terrible pasts and terrible thoughts, currently on hiatus, making out at inappropriate times, mentions of past Andrew/Kevin, very non graphic murder but it happens so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 07:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carxies/pseuds/carxies
Summary: “You plan on killing four people,” Andrew says, toys with the last piece of the cake on his plate. “And you want me to be the accomplice.”“When you put it like that,” Josten says, sipping his coffee. “Yes.”Andrew glares at him.Or, Andrew gets caught in what he doesn’t understand - time travel, supernatural and emotion. How could have he known Past and Future were lovers all along, tired of the eternity, tangled in the strings of human’s fate, twisting it with their own kind of passion.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
First of all, huge thanks to my friend Vana, who dragged me into this fandom and deals with me on daily basis.
> 
> This fic has been this huge abstract idea in my head for over two years, so it feels surreal to be finally posting the first chapter of it. I hope at least some soul out there likes the idea
> 
> PS: I have reposted this because I messed up some things with the cahpters and I thought just posting the whole thing again would be less confusing

_17:03:06; 130518_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

The time is an unchanging, constant force.

It doesn’t slow down for anyone; it doesn’t go by faster either. Humans have little to no power over it, obeying it since the very beginning. No one can bend time to their will, but they are a few who can swim through the flow of it, back and forth.

The clocks stop in the presence of those. The phenomenon is hard to notice in the world of imperfect technology. The batteries run out, storms cause power outages, things created by the human hands break.

It is hard to miss, however, when Andrew steps in the café to meet Neil Josten and the clock hangs above Josten’s head, unmoving.

The Fox café is nothing special. It is hiding from the busy main streets, tucked in the corner of city’s edge. It isn’t full enough to be suffocating and it isn’t empty enough for Josten to stand out in his huge black hoodie.

Andrew sees through the man. Josten is anxious, hunched in his seat, back to the wall and the exit clear in his sight.

It is the most frightened animals who attack first, Andrew would know.

Neil Josten is a red flag on legs and Andrew had known that before he stepped a foot in the café. He had agreed only because Nicky wouldn’t stop bothering him, a valid reason. Something about Josten needing help and offering a job. Andrew isn’t interested in the offer as much as he is in the man himself.

That, of course, is one of the secrets Andrew will take to the grave with him.

Andrew strides to Josten’s table, leaving his second thoughts at the door. He drags the chair across the wooden floor and flops down, all nonchalance despite his brain screaming about bad ideas. Andrew never listens.

Josten startles from the sound although he saw Andrew coming. The flinch alone tells Andrew more than he needs, confirms his theory. He doesn’t see much of the guy, but he doubts Josten has anything to show. Nicky would have mentioned it otherwise.

“Josten, I assume,” Andrew says, measuring him with a glare. He picks the menu from the table, doesn’t bother reading it.

Josten nods, the gesture jerky. “The other Minyard.”

“The Minyard,” Andrew corrects him, cannot help himself. He hasn’t quite grown used to Aaron’s presence yet.

Josten snorts and pushes the hood off his head, ginger curls falling into his eyes. He looks at Andrew, one cheek burnt and the other cut, undeniably beautiful despite the ruined skin. Andrew decides he hates him then; he’s never liked to be proven wrong.

“Nicky said you would be like this.”

“Nicky didn’t say you would be like this,” Andrew shoots back, unbothered by what Nicky might have said about his cousin. Nicky has learnt the hard way to keep his tongue behind his teeth.

Andrew doesn’t back down from the eye contact, not until Josten does to order a plain black coffee when a waitress interrupts them. She pays them no extra mind, ignorant towards the stopped clock, ignorant towards Josten’s scars. Andrew orders hot chocolate instead of coffee, the bitter taste doing nothing for his usually bitter mood.

The waitress promises a minimal wait and leaves them to their conversation, which Andrew is starting get bored by.

“Are we here to talk about my family?”

Josten shakes head and pulls an old pen from his pocket. He places it on the table in between the two of them. “Do you believe in time travel?”

Andrew scoffs, looks up at the clock above Josten’s head, back at Josten. “Let’s say I do,” he says, pokes the pen on the table until it rolls off the smooth surface.

Josten, unused to Andrew’s antics, sighs and bends down to pick the pen up. He straightens and offers the pen to Andrew, his eyes wild with unabashed curiosity. “Can you put it where it was?”

Andrew chooses to humour him, grabs the pen and lays the pen on its previous spot.

Josten hums, leans back in his chair to take a proper look at Andrew again. He pushes the sleeves of his hoodie up to his elbows, arms scarred worse than his face. Andrew knows better than to let his gaze linger on them. He knows better than to ask what monster did them, if the monster was Josten himself.

“Right,” Josten says and spins the pen. His fidgeting is annoying, but not enough to get on Andrew’s nerves. Not yet. “Time travel.”

“Time travel. What about it?”

“What if I told you it was possible?” Josten asks with a stony face, but his foot tapping under the table betrays his mask of indifference. The pen on the table slows its spinning and Josten catches it, shoves it back in his pocket. It is all done with more care than a person would treat an ordinary pen with.

The pen is precious to Josten, Andrew guesses.

There is something Andrew is missing, something poking fun at him right in front of his nose, but he cannot pinpoint what it is. Josten being a time traveller is a great possibility, almost confirmed at this point. It doesn’t, however, explain why he would go such lengths to meet Andrew. Why he would reveal himself to a stranger when it’s obvious he would rather stay in the shadows.

Josten is putting Andrew through a test, he must be, and Andrew doesn’t like not knowing if he’s going to pass.

“I would say you are crazy,” Andrew says.

Nicky wouldn’t put Andrew into danger, not willingly. He either trusts Josten or he isn’t aware of his hobby.

The waitress returns then, places their hot drinks in front of them and walks away without a second look. The human curiosity is stronger than morals, which leads Andrew to believe she is used to the scars.

Josten is on a familiar territory, a clever move. Too bad it means nothing to Andrew.

“Understandable. But consider it,” Josten says.

Andrew shrugs, drowns four sugar cubes in his chocolate. He responds to Josten’s disgusted face with a bored stare. He takes a sip of his overly sweet drink, lets it burn his tongue. “I am considering it.”

“Well,” Josten says, leaning across the table, closer to Andrew. His voice is low when he asks, “Won’t you ask me about my scars?”

The question catches Andrew of guard, twists every image of Josten he’s created so far. He doesn’t let Josten know as much, keeps his face blank as his mind goes into overdrive.

Andrew can’t wrap his head about the sudden boldness of Josten’s move. Josten’s anxious nature couldn’t have been a pretence, he isn’t a good enough of an actor for that. Josten is a double-edged sword, and Andrew likes sharp blades, but only when he’s the one handling them.

“Is that relevant?”

The corner of Josten’s lip twitches with a barely supressed smirk. “It kind of is why we’re here.”

Andrew forces himself not to break the eye contact, no matter how deep Josten’s eyes bore into his skull. A bad idea. Andrew caves in.

“What happened to your face?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Josten says and relaxes back in his seat. “Will you settle for my words alone or would you like to see as well?”

A curiosity killed a cat and it might kill Andrew as well. Only fools risk their lives for a single spark of entertainment. But Josten – Josten looks like he has every intention of burning Andrew alive, while he watches, basking in the heat.

“Show me.”

Josten doesn’t conceal his grin, victorious and cold. Attractive beyond words. Andrew wants to cut it off his face.

“It won’t be pretty,” Josten warns, in vain. He stands up and nods at Andrew, gestures towards the exit.

Andrew weights his options, realises he has made the decision already. He places two bills on the table next to his barely touched drink, pushes himself up. Josten snorts but doesn’t say anything, and they leave the café together.

Josten leads Andrew to a dirty, narrow alley. Luck is on his side, because it is empty aside from all the trash on the ground. Josten stares Andrew up and down, the few inches between them annoyingly obvious when they stand. Josten isn’t much taller, and it is hard to tell how he’s built underneath his baggy clothes. Andrew isn’t interested, anyway.

“Can you turn around?” Josten asks.

The frown on his face pulls the tight skin of his scarring. For a brief second Andrew wonders if it hurts still. Josten lacks his earlier confidence, the strings of the mask coming undone. The reveal of his true face nears.

Andrew tugs the string harder, eager. “No.”

“Close your eyes?”

“Only one.”

Josten sighs, loud for the show. Two can play the game, it seems. Josten gives up and pushes his left sleeve up. The strip of unscarred skin above his elbow surprises Andrew; he feels like he shouldn’t be looking.

Josten confirms that. “Then just don’t look at me until I tell you.”

Andrew nods. He gazes ahead of him, wills himself not to peak at whatever Josten is doing. Andrew can respect personal boundaries. He understands them. He knows the uncomfortable tingling that unwanted eyes on his skin cause. He refuses to give anyone such feeling.

When Josten allows Andrew to look again, his arms are covered.

Josten reaches out and stops mere inch from Andrew’s arm, a simple question following soon after. Andrew isn’t used to hearing it, much less to others respecting the answer.

“Can I touch you?”

Andrew stares at him, disbelief bubbling deep in his chest. Josten takes it as a refusal, pulls his hand back like he’s been burnt.

“Why?”

“Kind of need to for this whole thing to work,” Josten says, keeping a careful distance between them.

Andrew’s skin is itchy under his sweatshirt. He is burning and yet shivers are running down his spine. A second of touch won’t hurt him, shouldn’t hurt him. Won’t kill him.

Josten waits without moving a finger, patient while Andrew mulls it over. Andrew nods in the end; he’s come too far to back down now.

“Yes.”

There is something in Josten’s eyes, something Andrew doesn’t dare to name.

Andrew doesn’t expect gentleness from a man like Josten and he doesn’t get it. Josten isn’t exactly rough either, careful as he takes a hold of Andrew’s sleeve. His fingers barely brush Andrew’s wrist.

“Hope you don’t get sick too easily,” Josten says, the playful tone fake to Andrew’s ringing ears.

Before Andrew gets the chance to reply, the world is blurry around them. It reminds Andrew of riding a rollercoaster, his stomach floating somewhere in his body, unwilling to settle down. Everything is loud, too loud, and Andrew can’t help but shut his eyes, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

It is over as suddenly as it started.

Josten releases his grip on Andrew’s sleeve and takes a step away from him. Andrew bends over, willing his knees not to give out as he gasps for air. He forces it back into his lungs with difficulty.

“I threw up the first time,” Josten says vaguely somewhere beside Andrew, “You are doing well.”

“Do I look like someone with a praise kink to you?” Andrew grits out through clenched teeth.

He takes another deep breath, straightens his back and turns to Josten. He finds a grin on Josten’s face, small but genuine, like his face isn’t used to smiling. It makes Andrew’s hard work of breathing go to waste.

“Who knows. You might as well.”

“I don’t.”

Josten shrugs, tiny smile still playing on his lips. He tucks his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie and looks around the parking lot. The store in the middle of it must be abandoned for years, the paint fading and peeling.

The dawn is upon them, the clouds dark blue around the low sun. Josten’s ginger hair shines in the orange light. Andrew notices one odd curl standing up at the side of Josten’s head and wishes he didn’t. It is to be forever engraved into his memory.

“Where are we?” Andrew asks, disoriented.

“Baltimore,” Josten says, the smile gone for good. He fishes out an old model of phone. The thing is at least ten years old. Andrew is staggered it doesn’t have an antenna. “We’ve got about an hour to get to the spot.”

Andrew frowns and despite himself, he takes a peak at the ancient display in Josten’s hand. “I thought clocks stopped around you.”

“They do,” Josten says, matter of fact. He doesn’t explain any further, and Andrew doesn’t push him.

They walk through the busy city with relative ease. Josten opts to stay quiet, the hood shadowing his face. Andrew entertains himself with searching for something out of place, something to prove they are indeed in the past. His attempts are in vain; nothing stands out.

The city lives around them, unaware they don’t belong.

They stop at a red light among a small crowd. Josten curls into himself, eyeing his feet. Their small height difference allows Andrew to glance at Josten’s face. He catches a glimpse of the scars, realises what an idiot he is.

Josten’s wounds are still healing; they couldn’t have travelled far back. The realisation does nothing to reassure Andrew, but it is another piece of the puzzle he’s set to solve.

Josten either doesn’t notice Andrew staring or he doesn’t care.

They continue in silence until they leave the city behind them, along with its lights and noise to hide the unease in the air. Josten’s anxiety shines through now, his expression solemn and his step unsure. Andrew concludes Josten is a masochist to willingly return to the source of his trauma.

Then again, so must be Andrew.

Andrew has predicted something old and dark, straight out of a horror movie. Instead, they end up in a rich neighbourhood. Josten points to one of the family houses, with well-kept garden and cosy patio.

Andrew would know the best that it’s the prettiest houses hiding the ugliest truths.

Andrew’s next words get stuck in his throat, but Andrew is stubborn, won’t let a house scare him. Not anymore. “Is there a story or is it a surprise?”

Josten hums, eyes not leaving the house. His hands are buried in his pocket, but Andrew makes out the shape of his clenched fists. “I think you won’t need many words afterwards.”

They enter through the garage, straight into an underground tunnel that makes Andrew’s insides twist. He doesn’t bother asking why it smells like blood and death.

Josten walks on shaky legs, navigating on autopilot. He stops in front of an iron door and pauses to have a staring contest with them. When he wins, he pushes them open and marches inside, closing the door after Andrew.

The room is furnitured with a single armchair and a coffee table, both worse for the wear. There’s one window, but it doesn’t show outside, only another room. A one-way mirror.

Andrew assumes it’s down where the dirty business happens.

“They should come any minute,” Josten says, voice carefully void of emotion. He eyes the armchair with such disgust that Andrew almost doesn’t ask.

Almost.

“What is this place?”

Josten flinches, startled by Andrew’s question. “He likes to watch when he’s not out there getting his hands dirty.”

“Who?” Andrew pushes on.

“My father.”

Josten looks like he might continue, but the door to the horror room open and the words die on his tongue.

A woman enters the room, followed by a man carrying an unmoving body. Andrew would guess a corpse, if only the black curly hair wasn’t so familiar. Judging by Josten’s whimper, as if ripped out of him, Andrew is right.

The unconscious body belongs to no other than Josten.

The man throws Josten on the floor without care, and Andrew’s isn’t sure if the present Josten can feel it, but he jerks beside Andrew nevertheless. The woman kicks Josten’s ribs for laughs.

“That’s Lola,” Josten says, words laced with venom Andrew understands. “She should have been a plastic surgeon.”

They watch the scene unfold in silence, watch as the past Josten wakes up to be tortured. His screams ring in Andrew’s ears; probably will ring in his ears forever. Andrew has no idea how he would erase them.

Lola gets bored of her punching bag pretty soon and she sits in the corner of the room, allowing Andrew to take a proper look. Josten’s cheek is burnt already, fresh and nauseating. Andrew is not a man of sympathy, but something akin it squeezed his heart at the sight.

They are still waiting for the big finale of the show, it seems. It comes in the form of a middle-aged man, obviously Josten’s father. Josten took after him, ginger hair and sharp lines of nose and jaw.

The difference between them was the chilling air around the older man.

Josten tenses beside Andrew, takes a step back from the window as if his father could see him, sense his presence.

Josten’s father has Josten tied to a chair Lola was sitting on, the ropes digging into his ruined skin. Andrew sees his smile before he leans down and start carving Josten’s cheek, happy by Josten’s pained sobs.

Andrew’s body screams at him to avert his gaze, but he presses closer to the window. He catches the date on Josten’s cheek, dripping with blood.

Then Josten and his father vanish from the room, leaving Lola and the other man alone. Lola laughs.

Andrew turns back and finds the present Josten shaking, the old pen in hand.

“Let’s go back.”

When Andrew opens his eyes, he is sitting in the café again, holding four sugar cubes in his hand, fingers trembling ever so slightly.

Josten is still fighting his demons, fidgeting with his pen across Andrew.

Andrew drops his gaze to the sugar cubes in his hand, fascinated and terrified at the same time. He drowns the sugar in steaming hot his drink. He takes a sip, lets it burn his tongue.

The feeling of déjà vu is nothing compared to actually living the same moment twice.

Andrew curls his fingers around his mug, seeks the heat seeping through it. The clock above Josten’s head hasn’t moved. The café hasn’t changed. Something about Andrew has.

His mug is long empty by the time Josten pulls himself together. His eyes are clear of the past horror when he looks at Andrew, the satisfaction creeping into his expression. He proved himself.

“Well,” Josten says and clears his throat. He leans across the table, curly hair falling into his eyes and saving Andrew from having to stare into them. “Won’t you ask me about my scars?”

Andrew huffs, tilts his head back and look up at the ceiling instead. It doesn’t give him answers, but then again, Andrew has only one question left.

“I don’t need to.”

“I thought so.”

Andrew sighs and drags his eyes back to Josten. “Then, today’s?”

Josten nods and pushes his left sleeve up, the fresh cut wound obvious above his elbow. Andrew reaches out, stops before he can touch Josten’s skin. Josten nods again, permits Andrew to trace his fingers over the soon to be scar. One of god knows how many.

“Why is the one on your face a burn?” Andrew asks.

“Because that one is a burn,” Josten says, calm, although Andrew’s thumb in the wound must be uncomfortable. “My father thought it had to be me who writes the date, so he tried to get me to do it. Then he found out he just could write it himself.”

Andrew pulls back, taps his empty mug. “What do you need me for?”

Josten doesn’t reply, only hands Andrew his pen without a word. Andrew takes it, slams it down on the table with enough force to spill some of Josten’s drink. Josten doesn’t pay it mind.

“What you saw back there,” he starts, “Was a price for my mistake.”

“Explain.”

“It is easy to mess up if you don’t remember the details.”

Andrew frowns, stares at the pen. A test of his memory; simple. Unnoticeable.

“I tried to save someone and got caught instead,” Josten says. “It cost that person their live. I don’t want to repeat it.”

“So? Write a diary.”

Josten huffs, sips his plain black coffee like it isn’t the most disgusting thing in the world. “I wish it was that simple. I wish I had your perfect memory, but I don’t.”

Josten is used to violence. Yet he is caught by surprise when Andrew stabs his hand with his precious pen.

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Andrew says, pushes the pen deeper in Josten’s flesh.

Josten hisses at the blood dripping from his hand. Andrew chooses not to hear it.

“Then work with me,” Josten says. “I will give you how much you want.”

“I don’t care for money.”

With a single flick of the wrist, Andrew plucks the pen out of Josten’s hand. He doesn’t expect Josten to flinch; Josten doesn’t disappoint. Andrew grabs one of the tissues on the table and tosses it over Josten’s bloody hand. Josten doesn’t expect an apology; Andrew doesn’t offer one.

“What do you want?” Josten asks.

Josten is careful not to let the venom drip into his voice, but Andrew takes the satisfaction of recognizing it in his eyes. From this close, they are oh so blue and oh so murderous. One could fall for them if not cautious.

“Nothing,” Andrew says, automatically. “But there is something you can do for me in return.”

Josten takes a deep breath, wipes his hand with the tissue Andrew has given him. “What is that?”

Andrew tilts his head to the side, taps his temple and pretends to think. Josten’s narrowed eyes don’t leave Andrew’s face and that is kind of thrilling, even to a soulless man.

“There is someone dead who owes me.”

“Owes you money?”

Andrew shakes head. He gives Josten a pitying look, the one adults often give to children. He takes last glance at the pen and then throws it at Josten’s chest.

“Owes me a life.”

* * *

One shall visit only events past; never those yet to occur.

* * *

_13:07:04; 240419_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

The funeral of Neil Josten takes place on a perfectly sunny day mid spring.

The flowers have just begun to bloom, and Andrew isn’t one for a sentiment, but even he can admire the irony of it all. The singing of the birds echoing through the tense air, their song cheerful and yet heavy. The white petals scattered in the grass, beautiful to look at, easy to kill. It is all a joke, a cruel irony, and even if not a single soul dares to voice it –

The absence of the expected storm is far too obvious.

It was a storm supposed to accompany Neil to the other side. Powerful and cold, mimicking the blue of his eyes. A storm; the best synonym to the way he spoke, the way he kissed, the way he lived. There was supposed to be a storm on the day of the goodbye, Andrew is sure of it.

Instead, Neil is to be buried six feet under on the warmest day of the year so far.

The sun is as ruthless as it can be, high on the sky, not a cloud in sight. Yet, chills run down Andrew’s spine upon stepping in the small cemetery chapel, making the hair on the back of his neck stand. It reminds Andrew to stay alert. Always be wary; just like he’s been taught by Neil, just like he’s been taught by years of his own tortures.

Andrew scans the room and finds no one sticking out, just Neil’s friends, people Neil called family but never revealed the truth to. There’s no one out of ordinary, no stranger in the crowd, and that’s always the scariest part.

A giggle rings in Andrew’s ears, unknown and sweet, gone before Andrew can reach for the knife in his pocket. He forces one deep breath, in his lungs and right out. Neil would have laughed if he knew Andrew couldn’t stomach sitting through his funeral. With that, Andrew takes his seat, folds his hands in his lap, waits for everything to be over.

What a weird thought to have about a dead person.

The ceremony starts and Andrew wonders, for a brief second, whose idea it was to sit him in the front row, mere feet away from the priest who talks about someone named Neil.

Not Neil.

Not Neil, because Neil wouldn’t have wanted any of this. He wouldn’t have wanted his friends to cry their eyes out and Nicky to spend his hard earned money on such thing as a funeral of Neil Josten, a no one, just a name picked on a whim. He wouldn’t have wanted Andrew to sit in the front row.

Neil took it upon himself to be Andrew’s shield, from others and from Andrew himself, without asking for the effort to be recognized, without ever expecting anything in return. Andrew isn’t sure what he would offer anyway, what piece of a broken man would Neil want.

Neil would have known Andrew couldn’t stand looking at the casket that wasn’t made for Neil. A casket Nicky was lucky enough to get discount on, because death is too expensive for people who care.

Neil would –

Would, would, _would_. Would but never _will_. It’s a fleeting thought, but strong enough to stay on Andrew’s mind as the priest goes on with his lies and Neil’s family of choosing continues to cry. Andrew doesn’t succeed in swallowing down the bitter taste on his tongue.

The laugh echoes in his head again, louder this time. He turns and catches a glimpse of someone stepping outside into the heat, sheer fabric floating in the air behind them.

Andrew doesn’t need more.

He jumps to his feet and strides to the exist with no second thoughts. Whenever the others see his escape as an act of grief or anger doesn’t matter in the long run, doesn’t matter to Andrew. Would matter to Neil.

Outside, Andrew finds no one, only himself and his own ragged breathing. He leans against one of the trees, basking in the little shade it casts, and closes his eyes. He counts to ten, then back to zero, opens his eyes. The cemetery is still empty.

Andrew sighs and drags a hand across his face, fishing for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. They take longer to disappear these days, when it’s only him reaching for them. He refuses to acknowledge the tremor in his hands as he lights the stick. Andrew doesn’t feel sorrow and he doesn’t feel regret, and he refuses to accept the fact his hands haven’t stopped shaking for the past three days.

He is taking the first drag when the stranger shows themselves, a tall woman with grey hair and face of barely an adult. Her dress floats in no wind, and Andrew is tired, too tired, to deal with whatever bad news she is.

He blows a smoke in her face. She smiles and Andrew settles for a, ”What?“

“Mind if I join you?”

“Yes.”

“How unfortunate,” she says, voice dripping honey sweet. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

Andrew huffs, doesn’t dare to look away. “What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“About?”

“Neil, of course.”

The cigarette stays hanging in Andrew’s mouth. He doesn’t recognize the woman from either Neil’s photos or ramblings; Andrew remembers everything, everyone. The smile on her face doesn’t falter. Andrew isn’t foolish enough not to be wary of women, isn’t one to be charmed by beautiful faces and isn’t ignorant towards cold eyes.

“Did you know Neil?”

“Not for as long as I should have,” she says, grey hair flicking to blond and back to grey in a blink of eye. Andrew takes a step back from her, only to end up pressed against the tree behind him. She continues like she didn’t notice. She must have. “Neil always has a way to sabotage things, don’t you agree?”

At that, Andrew scowls, cannot help himself, even face to face with possible death. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, lets it burn between his fingers. “What do you mean?”

She leans closer, leaving Andrew no room to escape. He drops the still burning stick in the grass and reaches for the knife in his pocket.

“Neil wasn’t supposed to die,” she says.

Andrew wants to laugh; would laugh if he knew how. He tips his head against the tree, squeezes the knife in his hand, doesn’t draw it out just yet. Always the one to be afraid, always the one to seek the danger anyway. “I guess he was, after all.”

“No,” the woman says, voice firm. “Neil was supposed to bury you today.”

“Are you here to kill me?” Andrew asks, voice the most even it has been in three days.

She shakes her head and the movement gains her at least twenty years out of nowhere. “We were never meant to meet - you and me, Andrew. You chose him over me and now you are about to do so once more.”

The wrinkles are prominent around her eyes as he keeps on smiling, keeps on smiling like she knows the weight of Andrew’s knife, like she knows about the weight of a blade against his skin and the weight of promises he couldn’t keep. The weight of the ‘stay’ that cost Neil his most treasured possession, his life.

“What are you?” Andrews asks, finally. Not _who_, because _who_ applies to people. Andrew knows people, bad people and terrible people, but people nevertheless.

The woman’s face loses the years again, back to the young girl she was, pleased with Andrew’s phrasing of the question. “I am what you call the Future, I believe.”

The answer calls for more questions, each trickier to word than the other. Andrew decides to play along, to humour the universe. 

“What are you doing here?”

Her features morph into another woman, as beautiful as the first one, just as nerve-wracking to be watched by. She pushes the long blond hair out of her face, offering Andrew a good look at the grimace she now wears. Andrew has seen many horrors, insides of people lying next to them and blood on his own hands, but nothing comes quite close to this.

“There is a balance between everything in the universe. Good, bad. Past, Future. Balance,” she shoots Andrew a pointed look, “isn’t fair to you humans, no. It is not meant to be fair. Nothing can ever truly be fair.”

“Of course,” Andrew forces through clenched teeth. Aaron instead of him. Nicky instead of him. Neil instead of him.

“Neil disturbed that balance by changing his past,” she hisses right into Andrew’s face, words laced with venom that has Andrew gripping the knife in his pocket tighter. “He shall pay for doing so. He shall roam through the nothingness for the eternity, outside my world and outside yours, stuck in the middle of it all.”

Andrew doesn’t risk moving an inch, not even when he asks, “Changing his past?”

“Neil didn’t just die; he killed his past self. Saved you instead of letting you die. A foolish reason for a punishment worse than anything imaginable to a simple human. But,” she says, and the first woman takes her place, stepping back from Andrew.

He uses the opportunity to catch a breath, push himself away from the tree digging into his back. “But?”

“There is a way to bring him back.”

“A way to bring him back,” Andrew repeats, the words too close to getting stuck in his throat.

“He can be brought back to the human realm.”

“How?”

“If another person were to maintain the balance until his rightful point in the timeline, he could enter this world again.”

Andrew stares at the woman, barely blinking. “That’s impossible.”

The Future’s smile twists into an ugly grin, too wide to be human, too wide for Andrew’s liking. Her laugh echoes through the cemetery, two faces morphing into one, indistinguishable. “Haven’t you learnt, Andrew? Everything is possible.”

Andrew grits his teeth, digs the tip of his shoe in the dirt. He crosses his heart, ready to sell his soul if he still has any.

“How?”

They say that the Destiny has her hands too full to care about a single person, busy with her wicked ideas for the bigger events. They say she leaves it for a Coincidence, her more playful self, hidden under a pretty cape.

Andrew doesn’t know much about the Destiny, but he’s met her sister; with void eyes and chaos playing on her open palms. The Future, she introduced herself. He can’t describe her other than the mischief and something else behind her smile.

She listened to the sound of cries and human sorrow, took a pity on Andrew – or maybe she grew bored of watching from afar. Unlike her sister, she offered a fair deal. A look into her mind for a piece of Andrew’s past. She, who cannot remember, and he, who cannot forget, shook hands on a perfectly sunny day mid spring.

And how Andrew could have known Past and Future were lovers all along, tired of the eternity, tangled in the strings of human’s fate, twisting it with their own kind of passion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil crawled into Andrew’s bed the same way he sneaked between Andrew’s ribs. With a consent, all of Andrew’s foolishness poured into a single word. Andrew told Neil to stay and gave him a key; Neil knocked first each damn time anyway.

_19:07:14; 130518_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

“I want to see them suffer,” is what Josten tells Andrew before they part ways. Andrew doesn’t humour him with a reply.

He strides to the parking lot, shuts himself in the ugly box on the wheels his family calls a car. There he allows himself to sit in peace, the doors locked.

Josten is honest about nothing but his hatred. He burns for revenge, will not let himself be doused until he is satisfied with the pain he caused. The fire should burn Andrew; it ignites his heart instead. There is no other way than to continue, stand by Josten at the front line of a warzone.

Andrew drives home with a cigarette in hand and foot pressing the pedal in the floor. He doesn’t roll the windows down and the car fills with smoke. It seeps into the seats, into Andrew’s clothes. It also clouds Andrew’s mind, it seems.

If Josten is a walking red flag, Andrew must be an embodiment of a death wish.

Andrew succeeds in avoiding Nicky for three days.

It isn’t a hard task, not for someone used to sneaking around. Nicky moves slowly these days, makes a lot of noise on top of that. The wood floors of the house don’t favour him. Andrew hearts the creaking long before Nicky appears to irritate him.

Andrew lazes around and reads, tries to turn the radio in his head off. There is a thought, however, an annoying little voice, nagging him. It demands answers Andrew doesn’t have, whispers and screams until Andrew gives in.

Andrew is used to being at war with his own mind, but it’s been a while since his curiosity pushed him into a corner. Or perhaps not that long at all.

On the fourth day, Andrew marches into the kitchen with a purpose.

After months, years, there is something Andrew wants. No matter how dangerous the want has proven to be in the past.

Nicky is where he almost always is, by the table pushed against the wall. He keeps his plants there, a bunch of flowerpots and soil all around. Most of the plants die within a week into Nicky’s care, but Andrew keeps on buying them for him. A cheap compensation for what Nicky lost because of Andrew.

Andrew places the latest addition to the collection in front of Nicky instead of a greeting. A small, fragile aloe plant. The leaves are already dry. Andrew figures the goodbye won’t be as hard for Nicky that way.

Nicky startles, clutches his chest. “Damn it, Andrew,” he bites out, but smiles seconds later. He eyes the plant, touches one dead leaf and watches it fall onto the dirty table. “You didn’t even try this time.”

Andrew doesn’t waste breath on explaining himself. There is no easy way to put what his gifts truly mean. No easy way to admit Nicky is the reason Andrew cannot sleep the past four months, haunted by his conscience and the vivid image of Nicky in front of the club.

He grabs one of the dining chairs and drags it to Nicky’s table, flops down on it.

“Thanks anyway,” Nicky says. His voice is as cheerful as ever, and Andrew hates it, always has hated it.

“Whatever.”

“How did it go with Neil?” Nicky asks. He wipes his hands on the blanket thrown across his lap, covered in mud stains. He looks at Andrew, wearing a careful mask of indifference. The spark of curiosity in his eyes betrays his casualness.

Curiosity must be a family trait.

“Neil,” Andrew says. Coming from Andrew, the name sounds all wrong. “Neil is an asshole.”

“You aren’t exactly the nicest person either,” Nicky grumbles. He reaches for an empty flowerpot, decides to repot the aloe. Andrew watches him throw soil into the pot, more of it falling onto the once light blue blanket. Aaron’s guilty gift.

“I never claimed to be.”

Nicky digs a hole in the middle of the soil filled pot, tucks the aloe in it. He moves onto covering its roots. His hands stop and he turns to stare at Andrew, scolding. A parent with no kids; a kid himself.

“Wait,” Nicky says. “Were you nice? At least Andrew kind of nice?”

Andrew stares back at him.

“Andrew!”

“Nicky.”

Nicky sighs. “What did you do?”

Andrew clicks his tongue, leans closer to Nicky. Like an imbecile, Nicky mimics Andrew. “I stabbed his hand with a fork. It slid right between his bones.”

Nicky yelps, grabs the edge of the table and pushes himself away from Andrew. He throws a handful of soil at Andrew for a good measure. “What for?!”

“For being an asshole,” Andrew says. He brushes the soil of his sweater, lets all of it fall on the floor. Aaron won’t be able to tell the difference when he’s cleaning later anyway.

Nicky turns his attention back to the dying plant. “I should have known you wouldn’t behave.”

“Talking about knowing,” Andrew says, “What do you even know about the guy?”

Nicky mulls the question over. When Nicky looks at Andrew, there is suspicion written on his face. Josten is not the one he is suspicious of. “Not much. Neil doesn’t like to share things about himself. Why?”

Andrew pretends to miss the question. “And you don’t think that’s weird?”

“You,” Nicky points accusing finger at Andrew, “Never talk about yourself either. And we’re family. Do I find you weird? Actually, don’t answer it. I do.”

Andrew taps his knuckles on the table. He wishes he didn’t leave his cigarettes upstairs. “Nicky.”

Nicky sighs. “I don’t know shit,” he admits. “I met the guy at the hospital and he was a better company than Aaron.”

“I can imagine,” Andrew says before he thinks better of it. The words are out there, unable to be taken back.

Nicky doesn’t seem to catch it. “That’s all,” he says, done with the conversation. He pushes himself away from the table, crosses his arms across his chest. The floor creaks, familiar by now.

“I want to watch something,” Nicky announces, his voice lacking the usual liveliness that comes with Nicky being Nicky.

Andrew gets up and steps behind Nicky, grabs the cold handles of Nicky’s wheelchair. No matter how many times he has done this, it always feels like the first time. The pattern once pressed in the rubber has long vanished. It’s been four months.

There are days when Nicky doesn’t allow anyone to touch the handles and tortures himself with moving around the house on his own. There are days when his arms are too sore, but he won’t admit it. There are days when he begs them, with a single glance, not to forget him. Like Andrew could ever forget Nicky; Andrew cost his cousin his legs.

“Kevin called,” Nicky says as Andrew pushes the wheelchair to the living room.

Nicky doesn’t say call him back. He doesn’t ask why Kevin hasn’t shown his face around in four months. Andrew hears it anyway. As he lights the fireplace, he thinks he might text Kevin. He might face his fantasy turned into a nightmare.

Kevin is everything Andrew once, as a naïve child, hoped to be. Tall and respected, handsome face with boyish charm to it.

Kevin’s personality is everything Andrew swore to never become. A coward. Always hiding; from himself, from his true potential. Kevin let people step over him in fear of walking ahead alone.

Andrew hates Kevin as much as he is attracted to him. Months of not seeing him means nothing to a perfect memory. Andrew wouldn’t forget the sharp lines in contrast with the elegant curves of Kevin’s face for as long as he lived. He hates that, too.

Kevin sits with his back straight and pretends to be a collected, assured man in a greasy bistro just outside the town. For a moment, Andrew believes him. For a moment, he reminds Andrew of Josten. But even Josten had more spine than Kevin. Andrew would love to see them together and then never see either of them again.

Kevin frowns at the menu, finding most of the items on the list unacceptable for an athlete. Andrew only ever appreciated Kevin’s career when he was ripping Kevin’s sweaty jersey off and Kevin kept his mouth shut.

Kevin never manages to stay quiet for long.

“Andrew,” Kevin starts, like he has a plan. Andrew glares at him and Kevin’s plan dissolves into this air. Andrew relishes in the clear displeasure flashing in Kevin’s eyes. They are as dark as Andrew remembers them.

“I’m not here to talk about the past,” Andrew informs Kevin. He hates Kevin and loves to see Kevin struggling, but he also still has a soft spot for Kevin. As soft as Andrew’s stone heart is capable of.

Kevin sighs, gives Andrew a look he thinks Andrew can read. He isn’t wrong, but Andrew refuses to acknowledge it as anything other than a simple look. Secret, meaningful glances are long past due. Kevin has missed the notice as he missed everything else.

They order and start eating in silence. Andrew isn’t sure how to phrase his reason for meeting Kevin, what words to use to outrage Kevin the most. Kevin’s outraged face is almost as good as his drowning in bliss one, Andrew’s guilty pleasure.

“I met someone like you,” Andrew says in the end, a bare truth.

“Someone like me?” Kevin asks, chewing on his salad. Four months haven’t granted him a cure for his obliviousness. Andrew wants to laugh.

Andrew waits until Kevin’s mouth is full so he can watch him choke on it. “Someone who travels.”

Kevin does choke. He forces himself to swallow and chucks half of his soda down for a good measure.

“How?”

“That’s the interesting part,” Andrew muses. He thinks it must be heard in his normally stoic voice, but Kevin doesn’t catch on it. “He found me through Nicky. I thought you might have been involved.”

Judging by Kevin’s shock, that is not the case. He has no idea of Josten’s existence then.

“He found you? Who is he?”

“I don’t kiss and tell, Kevin.”

“You are as full of secrets as you are full of shit,” Kevin says. Andrew thinks he’s grown a pair until Kevin tears his gaze away, lips pressed in thin line.

“Oh, Kevin,” Andrew says, leans across the table. Cannot help himself. “You would know what that is like the best.”

Kevin meets Andrew’s eye but scoots back in his seat, back against the cheap leather. “What did he want from you?”

“It’s that obvious?”

“No.”

“To travel with him,” Andrew says.

Kevin’s eyebrows meet his hairline. The magazines would love a shot of that expression, not the fake-confident Kevin they publish. “You cannot.”

“I can,” Andrew says, a matter of fact. “I did.”

Kevin has no response to that. Andrew watches him search for one as he bites into his burger. He grows bored of watching; he throws one fry at Kevin’s white shirt. It bounces of his chest onto the floor, leaving a ketchup stain. The most permanent mark Andrew has left on Kevin.

“I cannot stop you,” Kevin says, matter of fact. “But you should be careful. There is so much we don’t-“

“You know me,” Andrew says, picking another fry. He shoves this one into his mouth. “

“That is why I’m saying it,” Kevin says.

His gaze doesn’t have the same effect it used to. Andrew’s skin doesn’t prickle. He feels no need to push Kevin against the nearest wall. Andrew replaced one terrified time traveller for another, what a joy.

Andrew thinks of Josten, of his ginger curls and ancient phone in the pocket of his baggy pants. It hits Andrew then. The digital clock on the wall shows the same numbers it did when they entered. The hands of Kevin’s watch move when Andrew focuses on them.

“How do you get the watch to work around you?” Andrew asks, newfound interest brining him back to the present.

Kevin’s eyes drop to the subject of the question, a golden watch on his tan wrist. Working for a time traveller.

“You have to make them yours,” Kevin says. He slides the watch off and offers them to Andrew.

Andrew turns them in his hand. Nothing stands out until he spots the tiny letters engraved on the back. Kevin’s initials in a neat cursive. Of course.

“Sign them,” Andrew says. He gives Kevin his toy back, not interested anymore.

“A name isn’t always enough,” Kevin says.

That catches Andrew’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“It has to be something that is,” he pauses, searches for the right words. Kevin rarely finds the right words. “That is strong enough to tie the object to you. An essential part of you.”

“Yours _is_ your name,” Andrew scoffs. He wonders how one can hate themselves yet be so full of their own person. Kevin manages just fine.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Kevin says, no longer present in the room. Not mentally.

He is far away. Lost in his own head, a place no one is allowed into. Sometimes, that involves Kevin himself. He then drinks his consciousness away, washes his regrets and sorrows down with vodka. When he’s had enough, enough to forget himself but to still stand, he would come to Andrew and beg to forget what there was left. Andrew, like a fool, used to say yes.

Used to, months ago.

“I suppose I wouldn’t,” Andrew says and that’s it.

The only enclosure they are ever going to get. Andrew wonders how much it’s going to take to get the taste of Kevin’s bitter mouth off his own.

Neil Josten, despite the coldness of his stare, doesn’t have the eyes of a killer.

Josten is terrified. Terrified and haunted by his past; he’s shown Andrew enough for Andrew to understand. A simple look at his father sent Josten down a rabbit hole of panic. Andrew cannot imagine Josten facing the man with no wall between them.

Neil Josten doesn’t have the eyes of a killer. His mouth tells another story.

“A bloody revenge,” Andrew repeats Josten’s words.

He isn’t able to mimic the accent slipping past Josten’s lips with the word ‘bloody’. British, perhaps. Josten must be suppressing it for years.

Josten hums. He flips through the café menu like he’s considering ordering something other than the plain coffee. Andrew calls bluff.

Josten seeks safety. In his twisted mind, safety equals familiarity. It people were books, Josten would be a picture book. Pretty to look at, easy to get bored of.

And yet, Andrew isn’t bored.

Each picture of Josten contradicts the previous one. He presents himself as small and frightened, then goes and tells Andrew his murderous intentions without missing a beat.

Josten has Andrew flipping through the pages as fast as he can, eager to get to the end. Andrew is itching to tear all the pages out and destroy the spine. Rip the pictures into pieces and glue them together as he pleases.

Andrew aches to watch Josten unravel, to see him bare of half-truths and pretence. To see him raw and real. What a dangerous desire for a man like Andrew to have.

The arrival of a waitress stops the track of Andrew’s thoughts. He looks at her so he doesn’t have to look at Josten no longer. He recognizes the same woman from the last time. He takes her in, the dark skin and short hair. The subtle nod towards Josten. Andrew carves her face in his memory. After all, Josten isn’t the only one who grew up to be wary of everyone.

“Black coffee, please,” Josten says. “And hot chocolate for him.”

The tiny gesture shifts the dominance from Andrew to Josten and the ground shakes under Andrew’s already unsteady feet. Josten knows what he’s doing. He must have.

Andrew whips his head back, only to meet Josten’s cheeky grin. “Chocolate cake,” Andrew says.

The waitress nods and scribbles it down on her notepad, the clicking of her heels echoing through the almost empty café as she walks away.

Josten raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment on the extra dessert. He lets Andrew have his power back without a fight. That unsettles Andrew way more.

Josten hides a smile behind his hand, faking a cough that fools no one. Perhaps Andrew is also written for the first graders.

The waitress brings their drinks and Andrew’s cake, sets them down without a word. Andrew digs in the cake to buy himself time. Too late he realises time means nothing to Josten.

“You plan on killing four people,” Andrew says, toys with the last piece of the cake on his plate. “And you want me to be the accomplice.”

“When you put it like that,” Josten says, sipping his coffee. “Yes.”

Andrew glares at him.

Josten doesn’t back down. He reaches for Andrew’s fork and takes his from Andrew’s vicious hands. He has learnt his lesson it seems. Andrew bites down the smirk creeping onto his lips instead of the cake.

“Why do you need me?”

Josten’s eyes stay on Andrew as he pops the fork in his mouth. He sucks the crumbs and cream off it, nose scrunching at the sweetness. The image is bound to haunt Andrew’s mind for the rest of the time, stored in Andrew’s memory next to Kevin’s drunk sighs.

“Well,” Josten speaks around the fork between his lips, “We talked about this. Don’t you remember?”

Andrew scowls. He leans across the table and plugs the fork from Josten’s lips. He stabs the cake and shoves it into his mouth, ignoring Josten’s taunt for Josten’s own good.

“What happened to saving people?” Andrew asks instead.

Josten freezes at the words, cup of coffee inches above the table. It brings Andrew a sick kind of joy to know he hit a sore spot. He wants to smash it with a baseball bat next, remind Josten being known goes both ways.

“There are things you cannot do even if you time travel.”

“Why?”

“Some things are just impossible.”

Andrew crosses his arms over his chest. He stares Josten down when he can. “What things.”

“Changing your own past,” Josten says, the look in his eyes distant. Cold. “Saving that person meant changing my past.”

“Why can’t you change your past?”

“You just cannot.”

The answer doesn’t satisfy Andrew. He has to think of better way to force the truth out of Josten, but for now, he settles on,

“What is your masterplan then?”

Josten, the cheeky little thing, smirks like he knew Andrew would agree all along.

* * *

Time travel causes one's timeline to become inconsistent. 

Insignificant events may be lost in the flow of the time, resulting in feelings of deja-vu.

Long lost items might be found again.

* * *

_05:24:09; 280419_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

Andrew startles awake. The feeling of eyes on him ring the alarms in his head, each louder than the previous one. Andrew’s heart threatens to jump out of his chest; Andrew reaches for the knife under his pillow even faster.

Holding his breath, he strains his ears for any noise. The room remains silent, dark. There is no one else, only Andrew his partner for life, endless paranoia.

Andrew glances to his right, Neil’s side of the bed. It is empty. Cold and untouched. Andrew cannot force himself to change the sheets, wash away Neil’s scent from the pillowcase.

Neil crawled into Andrew’s bed the same way he sneaked between Andrew’s ribs. With a consent, all of Andrew’s foolishness poured into a single word. Andrew told Neil to stay and gave him a key; Neil knocked first each damn time anyway.

Andrew refuses to dwell on any of it, refuses to think about the hole in his chest. One of the stages of grief, he knows. Knowledge doesn’t always help.

The morning is nothing more than a routine, a muscle memory. Feed the cat, feed himself, ignore the phone. Andrew wonders how the thing is not dead yet, three days without charging. Then again, Andrew hasn’t touched it in as long. Maybe the device was worth the ridiculous money Neil paid for it.

The tingling sensation of eyes on him stays with Andrew until later afternoon. He settles with Sir on the sofa, allows the cat to nap in his lap. At least one of them can still sleep.

Andrew hears her then. The giggle is impossible to forget.

The Future appears on the other side of the room, wearing her grey-haired woman costume. She regards Andrew with a blank expression, her form blurry. She reminds Andrew of smoke of shared cigarettes. He doesn’t dwell on the comparison.

Feeling relief upon seeing a creature unable to be killed is a clear sign of madness, Andrew tells himself. He has never claimed to be living in the right state of mind.

“What do you want?” Andrew asks, Sir stirring in his lap. The question leaves his lips with the price of a bitter memory. Neil’s words directed to Andrew, eyes clear but hungry. The answer was easy back then.

The Future smiles her wicked smile, disturbing and inhuman. She watches Sir with a foreign interest. Andrew doesn’t care for the stupid cat, but he tugs it closer to his chest. Sir goes without any complain.

She snaps out of her trance. She crosses the distance between her and Andrew in a few short steps, grabs Andrew’s arm before he can react.

Andrew looks her right in the eye and the world dissolves into darkness.

The first thing Andrew sees again is Neil. Alive and healthy, unguarded smile on his scarred face.

Andrew’s chest squeezes with emotion Andrew doesn’t care to name, million needles stabbing his heart. Andrew despises it, despises the effect Neil has had on him since the very beginning.

Neil opens and closes his mouth. Andrew cannot make out what he’s saying. Andrew cannot hear him at all. It feels like being underwater, when Andrew was eight and hoped to never resurface.

Andrew surveys the room, realises it is not one of his memories. Neil sits in someone else’s living room. Neil isn’t talking to Andrew.

Andrew doesn’t recognize the place, but Boyd emerges in the room seconds later, and the scene starts to make sense.

Andrew remembers Boyd, Neil’s best friend. Neil’s first real friend. Boyd and Andrew didn’t start on good terms, something about Andrew’s overprotective nature. Boyd’s act of an older brother always made Andrew’s blood boil.

Andrew watches them like a silent movie.

Andrew almost misses Boyd reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a piece of paper and hands it over to Neil. With utter care, Neil accepts it. The smile freezes on his lips. Andrew steps closer to see what has distressed Neil and wwishes he didn’t.

Neil strokes the ultrasound picture with a shaky finger. Although tiny and blurry, it speaks volumes, even in a silent movie. When Neil looks up at Boyd, his eyes are filled with tears. He chews on his bottom lip, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Andrew takes an unsteady step back, unsure of how much happiness torn away from Neil he can handle witnessing.

Boyd hugs Neil, bone crushing embrace Andrew has seen before. Neil smiles into his shoulder, cheek squished against Boyd’s hoodie. He tilts his head to a side.

For a mere second, he is looking straight at Andrew. Straight through Andrew.

Andrew finds his hand acting without his permission, stretched out, longing. He jerks his hand back, sick to his stomach. He shakes off whatever spell the vision has put him under. Neil keeps on smiling.

In a blink of eye, Boyd’s living room is gone.

Neil sits on the floor of their bedroom instead, bare legs crossed underneath him. He’s wearing Andrew’s sweater, loose on his lanky figure. It slips down his shoulder, offers a glimpse at Neil’s freckled skin. In the orange light of the dusk, he is glowing. Magnificent in all his flaws.

Pose relaxed and expression free of any mask, Neil is the epitome of harmony. A bunch of papers spread out in front of him, some blank and some filled with Neil’s terrible handwriting.

Andrew doesn’t dare to move. His eyes follow the line of Neil’s shoulder, down to the burn scar peeking out of the wool.

Neil is oblivious to Andrew’s presence. He taps his pen against his knee, eyebrows furrowing at his own thoughts. Andrew sits a foot in front of him, just to see his face better. He doesn’t find any new marks or scars. The Neil in front of him is the same person Andrew guards in his memory.

Andrew craves to touch him, but this Neil cannot consent to be touched, so Andrew settles for counting his freckles. The ones he knows by heart and the ones that escaped even a perfect memory. He thinks of the last time he pressed his lips against the little dots. What a shame Andrew has never been patient enough to appreciate them all when he could.

When he had the time to do so.

The emotion is as close to regret as Andrew is capable of, throat closing up and chest heavy.

The bedroom door opens and brings Andrew back to the reality.

Neil doesn’t startle, doesn’t flinch like Andrew remembers him doing so often. Andrew watches himself join Neil on the floor, knees knocking together. The contrast of them is a lot to take in, Neil’s eternal beauty next to Andrew’s ordinariness.

Andrew cannot help but dwell on it all.

“I will give Matt and Dan a half,” Neil announces. He finds an envelope in the mess of papers, shows it to the imaginary Andrew. “They will need it more than us.”

The imaginary Andrew nods. He receives a smile in return, one that is usually followed by the question. One Andrew knows is followed by a kiss.

Andrew shuts his eyes closed and he’s thrown in the water again, swimming through the sea of time.

Andrew’s stomach refuses to settle long after he’s back in their apartment.

He paces around, for the first time agrees that the place might be too small. Andrew hasn’t considered being claustrophobic until that moment. He ends up on the kitchen counter, one knee drawn to his chest. Sir lies by his side, unbothered.

There isn’t anyone to scold them.

Sir has left his food bowl full. Neil’s voice in the back of Andrew’s head nags him to take the cat to the vet, but Andrew finds it pointless. Sir has grown attached to Neil the same way Andrew did, and it is up to Sir if he survives the loss.

It is up to Andrew if he survives letting someone in. Neil did not.

Andrew told Neil that staying wouldn’t kill him. He was proven wrong in the worst way.

During the night, when the noise outside dies out and Andrew’s only company is his guilt, it is hard to remember the words of the Future. Hard to believe them, because the fate is too cruel to give Andrew a second chance.

Andrew is unconvinced even as he stands in front of the Fox café.

He has nothing to lose, however, so he pushes the door open and walks inside. Without meaning to, his gaze falls on the clock. Seconds pass and the little hand of the clock moves with them. Andrew doesn’t know why he expected to see them frozen.

That is a lie.

Andrew has half a mind to turn around and leave, but Wilds spots him from behind the counter, puzzled look on her face. Andrew clenches his fists and nods in her direction. He takes a step forward the usual table only to stop dead in his tracks. Andrew doesn’t recognize himself as a creature of habit.

He picks a table by the window, unfamiliar, new.

Wilds comes with a notebook in her hands, although she’s aware Andrew isn’t stopping for a coffee. She sits down and Andrew notices how tense she is to be in his presence, but he doesn’t bother to make her feel welcome. If Neil’s friends think Andrew is going to leash out like a wild animal without Neil, it’s their business. Andrew might as well.

Andrew came with a purpose, however, and the envelope is heavy in the pocket of his coat. Andrew has written Boyd’s and Wilds’ names on it, but he would much rather see Neil’s chicken scratch.

Wilds must share the sentiment as he slides it towards her.

She touches the envelope only when Andrew’s hands are back by his sides. Curious but cautious. Andrew doesn’t blame her; she is a friend of Neil’s, after all.

She opens the envelope with careful fingers, eyes widening when the white paper reveals the bundle of money. She slaps her hand over the envelope and pushes it towards Andrew. “What is this?”

Andrew regards her with a blank stare. She doesn’t budge. Neil’s friend.

Wilds is one of the very few people who don’t fear Andrew. She tried to give Andrew a shovel talk once she figured out what was going between Andrew and her precious Neil. Andrew would have liked her in another life. In this one, he has no feelings towards her.

“Neil wanted you three to have it,” Andrew says. Wilds doesn’t seem any more understanding, so he adds, “The baby.”

Wilds gapes at Andrew. “I haven’t told anyone yet. Not even Matt. How-“

Neil would have cared. Neil would have wanted Andrew to care. Andrew doesn’t. “Just take the money,” he says as he stands up, done with the conversation.

He leaves the cursed place with a promise of never coming back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I personally don't like scenes in fic that don't include the main pairing, but some things need to be done and my sick and twisted mind ended up enjoying writing Nicky and Kevin


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew gathers what is left of his lot, a sad little group of troubled bastards, for a night out.

_22:39:40; 190518_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

In Andrew’s case, an attraction, no matter how soul consuming, cannot overrule a doubt. Andrew finds himself drawn to terrified time-travellers, a horrible taste in men to have, but he has long learned to ignore emotions to see the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is full of holes, empty spots Andrew needs to fill.

The biggest of them all, a screaming void, is not the reason, but the means of how Josten has found Andrew. The Nicky excuse, although backed-up by Nicky, is nothing but a short-legged lie. It is falling apart at the seams each time Andrew as much as pokes it. Andrew prods it any second his mind isn’t preoccupied, which happens to be often with the newfound silence at the house.

Nicky doesn’t offer the answers Andrew seeks. Andrew must dig by himself, get his hands dirty and leave his filthy fingerprints on the bare truth of Neil Josten. So far, all Andrew has is mud; Andrew is searching for flesh and bones and blood.

Andrew gathers what is left of his lot, a sad little group of troubled bastards, for a night out.

Aaron, a twin brother, lost and found. Aaron, for whom Andrew would rot in hell, only to receive bitter animosity in return.

Kevin, who wasn’t a lover and isn’t a friend either. Kevin, whom Andrew has sworn to protect, only to have his chest pierced in return.

Josten, who revealed so much of himself to Andrew and yet there is nothing for Andrew to grasp. Trying to know Josten is like trying to cage the fire of Josten’s hatred with bare hands. Andrew ignores the threat of pain for the excitement of the sparks.

Josten, in the backseat of Andrew’s ugly car, as alluring as ever, wearing the clothes Andrew had bought and Nicky forced him to put on before leaving.

Andrew craves a cigarette or two, hands itchy on the steering wheel.

Deep down, buried under layers of fear and resentment, Andrew wants. Wants the acknowledgment of bastards like he himself is. He wants to be sure they would go the lengths he would go for them. Most of all, he wants to be wanted.

There is no telling how far Aaron would go for a brother he hates. There is no guarantee of Kevin not turning his back and running to save his own skin. Deep down, along with all the want lies a knowledge they would leave him for death the same way he would die for them. Without a second thought.

Josten-

Andrew cannot trust Josten’s cold eyes when he promises unimaginable in return for Andrew’s help. Josten is selfish in a way Andrew could never be, could never understand. Josten fights tooth and nail to keep himself alive while Andrew held a blade to his wrist for someone else.

“How is Nicky?” Kevin asks from the passenger seat he oh so maturely argued about with Aaron until Aaron decided to be the bigger man. Kevin treasures his life enough not to comment on that, if not only because face isn’t the only thing Aaron and Andrew share.

Andrew would prefer the three of them squeezed in the backseat, away from him physically if they already managed to creep between his ribs. However, Josten has showed Andrew solidarity about unwelcomed touches. Andrew isn’t one to forget such detail, which leads him to suffering through Kevin’s proximity instead.

“Miserable he couldn’t join the merry band,” Andrew says, and there is a hint of truth to the answer, no matter how much sarcasm coats it.

Andrew makes the mistake of looking in the rear-view mirror. He catches Josten staring at him, a question in his eyes but not leaving his mouth. He must know, must suspect -

Andrew forces his attention back to the road. He changes lines without a signal just to have an excuse for the wild blood thumping thought his body as the car behind them honks.

Kevin doesn’t grace them with a reply and the car stays dead silent until Andrew kicks everyone out in front of the club. In the parking lot, Andrew allows himself a minute to breath, compose himself. He huffs, slams his fist against the dashboard. He isn’t one to be nervous because of a boy.

A killer, that is a different story. Andrew came here to solve a mystery, after all.

Andrew stalks inside the club and to the table his lot managed to steal for themselves. It is one of the tiny square ones, the chairs around it pushes against each other. The only free seat is next to Josten and Andrew isn’t a fool to think of it as a coincidence.

Nothing is a coincidence with the Minyard twins, Andrew has realised long time ago.

Aaron doesn’t hide his open curiosity when Andrew flops down and accepts the shot glass Kevin pushes towards him from the still full tray. Without Nicky, the trio doesn’t bother with clicking the glasses before downing them. There is never cheer at the table of Andrew’s lot.

Josten sips from a can of soda. It catches Andrew’s attention better than any of Aaron’s interrogative looks, demanding to be delighted why there’s a stranger among them.

“What is that?”

Josten looks around the table, checks if Andrew is talking to him. When Kevin and Aaron pretend to mind their own business, he turns in his seat to face Andrew. Andrew is a man of no regret, and yet he questions his own decision of giving Josten a shirt that isn’t four sizes bigger on him. Seeing the real shape of Josten makes him realer, touchable.

“A soda,” Josten says simply, takes another sip.

Andrew presses his lips together into a tight line, to stop himself from lashing out. He is surprised of the lack of anger bubbling inside of him. There’s only the growing attraction; is impossible to resist when Josten’s mask slips for one cheeky remark, daring and tempting.

“Won’t you have a big boys’ drink?” Andrew asks, waving his empty glass in the space between them.

There isn’t much of it, not with the tiny table, not with the noise of the club forcing them close in order to be heard. Josten’s knee knocks against Andrew’s and Andrew wills himself to stay still. Don’t back down, don’t push back.

“I don’t drink,” Josten says.

Josten brings the can to his lips again and tips it, downing the remaining of the soda in one go. Andrew watches his adam’s apple move and curses himself for not allowing Josten to enter the unholy ground of Eden in his huge hoodie.

Josten slams the can on the table with more force than necessary and he doesn’t smirk, but his eyes do the trick for him anyway. Andrew aches to stab him the same way he aches to never let Josten go.

“You do tonight,” Andrew says, the fierceness breaking the usual monotone of his voice. He snatches two glasses from the tray in the middle of the table, holding them in front of Josten’s face.

Josten tilts his head to the side, considers Andrew’s motives and decides to risk it. Andrew doesn’t understand why. “I suppose one won’t hurt.”

His fingers brush Andrew’s when he wraps them around one of the glasses. Andrew downs his second shot and blames the fire in his ribcage on the alcohol.

After five drinks, Josten starts talking. Sadly for Andrew, he only desires to argue with Kevin.

“Just saying, man, it was kinda your fault too,” Josten says, nods at himself.

“I- Andrew, you have brought a heathen to this table,” Kevin shouts over the music.

Josten remains unbothered, an eyebrow raised at Kevin.

Kevin groans, pushes himself away from the table and stumbles on his way to the dancefloor in his search of Aaron, an unlikely ally. Aaron has left the table after being proclaimed the ugly one. Andrew doesn’t dwell on it.

Josten tips his head back and openly laughs. Andrew has never wanted to kiss a man more. To taste the laugh off Josten’s lips first-hand, steal all the air from Josten’s lungs so Andrew can breathe again.

Too bad the man happens to be a killer.

Andrew figures there is no point in beating around the bush, not when Josten is five shots of vodka deep. “How did you really find me?”

“Find you?” Josten asks, his eyes suddenly sober.

Andrew toys with the shot glass closest to him, all of them empty. “It is one thing to meet Nicky in the hospital and other to know about my memory. It’s not a thing that comes up in a small talk.”

Josten hums, grabs a glass of his own and places it in Andrew’s. “True.”

Andrew waits for him to elaborate, fingers longing for the blades tucked against his skin. “So?”

Josten sighs, runs a hand across his scarred face. “I wasn’t originally looking for you. I took you more like a package deal.”

Josten could mean him and Aaron, but the twins would be useless to him. That leaves someone Andrew has already suspected.

“Kevin,” Andrew says.

Josten nods. “I was looking for him because we have some.. Some enemies in common. When I was looking for him, it was hard to miss you were with him at every step. Then I met Nicky in the hospital. I thought Aaron was you.”

Andrew barks out something akin to a laugh. “How could you not tell us apart?”

“I don’t know, he is the ugly one,” Josten says, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Andrew lets the remark slide, if only to watch the grin tugging at his lips. “What then?”

“I thought he was you, so I asked him about Kevin, and he told me that if I want to get to Kevin, I have to go through you. Nicky assured me you were a sweetheart.”

“And my memory?”

Josten cradles his chin in his palm, his elbow slowly slipping on the table. He wears a strange, unguarded sleepy smile. “I only figured it out at the café.”

“Not even they know.”

“A perfect memory,” Josten says, obviously fighting exhaustion, his eyelids dropping every now and then. “It is hard to miss when you are looking for it.”

Andrew craves another drink to wash out the bitter taste off his tongue, but the night is becoming an early morning. Andrew has his answers and even more questions, except he isn’t willing to ask those. He shall bury those with his heart and bones.

Josten is seconds away from falling asleep on a messy club table. He wakes up enough to stand on his own as they make their way through the crowd to grab Aaron and Kevin. He is lively enough to claim the passenger seat by the time they are stepping outside, in the biting cold and pouring rain.

Aaron and Kevin slump against each other in the backseat, too tired and too drunk to protest about any unfairness. Josten curls into himself in the passenger seat, pulls the sleeves of the shirt Andrew got him over his palms. Andrew turns the heating on.

The radio plays mostly old songs Andrew remembers from his childhood, and he hates them, but he isn’t willing to risk a silence with Josten now. Not when the stiches keeping Andrew whole are tearing.

Andrew speeds on the empty streets, racing the rising sun behind them. He sneaks a glance at Josten out of the corner of eye, unable to resist. He feels Josten staring back as soon as he returns his attention to the road and it is a dangerous game to play with alcohol still flooding in Andrew’s veins. Andrew grips the steering wheel tighter.

When Andrew looks the second time, Josten’s eyes are already on him, steady and as icy as ever. Andrew cannot help but linger, linger on Josten’s scarred face illuminated by bring orange light.

Underneath all the ugly and twisted, Andrew wants, wants and wants-

A truck passes in front of them, a mere foot between it and the front of Andrew’s car.

Andrew stomps on the brake, jostling Kevin and Aaron awake in the back. Josten braces himself against the dashboard in the passenger seat and the radio continues to blast old-school songs, but Andrew is sure everyone can hear his heartbeat.

“Fucking hell,” Andrew spits out, willing his voice not to shake the way his hands do.

No one says anything as Andrew calms his heart. No one says anything. Andrew wishes they did.

The rest of the ride passes quicker, and Andrew finds relief in watching Aaron and Kevin trip in the house, holding onto each other. Josten pushes himself out of the car and shuts the door, leaning against it as he takes in his surroundings. He stays outside and Andrew stays inside the damn car.

Andrew wonders why he didn’t think of dropping Josten at his place, but he doesn’t entertain the thought for long. He doubts Josten would be willing to reveal his address anyway.

Yet, Josten continues to amaze him, catch his off guard, keep him on his toes.

The door slams closed and Josten is sitting in the passenger seat again, expression unreadable. Sobered up. He has nothing to say, nowhere to go, nothing to lose and a everything to gain.

It makes the two of them.

Andrew pulls out the pack of cigarettes, lights on without letting the windows down. Josten stays and inhales the smoke of Andrew’s lungs, along with all the frustration and darkness Andrew keeps captive in his ribcage.

They sit there for what feels like ages, a seed of an idea slowly growing roots and branching in Andrew’s brain.

“I plan on going back soon,” Andrew says when the sun is high on the sky and Josten’s eyes are soft with sleepiness again.

“Give me a time and I will take you there whenever you want,” Josten says, hand reaching for the door.

Andrew turns his gaze away, smothers his emotions the same way they have been smothered by others. “I don’t want anything.”

“Perhaps,” Josten says. “But you need to do whatever ‘this’ is to live.”

Andrew doesn’t acknowledge the truth of the statement and Josten leaves, leaves Andrew and his sorrows in his smoke-filled car.

\---

The landing in the past is not as sickening as the first one, but disorienting all the same.

Josten doesn’t touch Andrew for a second longer than needed, steps out of Andrew’s space as soon as he can. Somewhere in the back of Andrew’s spinning head, he appreciates Josten’s quiet respect for what it is. An understanding.

The darkness is the first thing Andrew registers when his organs settle in their rightful place and Andrew opens his eyes to see nothing.

His first instinct is to freeze. Not to shield himself, not to protect himself, because that only ever makes them hungrier, rougher. The key is to stay still, hope to die soon. Hell is a place on earth; a dark room in the middle of the night, a lovely house in a good neighbourhood.

Andrew’s arms hang limp by his sides, blades warm against the cold skin of his forearms. He reaches for one of them, squeezes the knife until he feels the blood flowing in his veins again. He reminds himself where he is, with whom he is.

He searches for Josten; a possible threat, a possible saviour. The lines have always been blurred for Andrew. As on cue, Josten reveals himself about three feet away from Andrew, staring at his ancient phone. The display illuminates his frowning face, barely, but it is enough to anchor Andrew in the present. The shadows age Josten’s face, make Andrew question how old he is.

“Bloody hell,” Josten curses under his breath and Andrew shakes it all off, his fears and his unwelcomed interest.

“What?”

Josten huffs. “We are at the other side of the damn city,” he says and shoves the phone in the back pocket of his baggy jeans. He pulls out a flashlight instead.

Andrew bids goodbye to things going smoothly, stares at Josten as a sharp ray of light settles on his face. Josten shrugs and moves the flashlight around. There is nothing around them, the ground soft under Andrew’s feet. The realisation dawns on Andrew.

“We are in the middle of a field,” he deadpans. “You should have said so sooner, I wouldn’t have worn my nice shoes.”

“Those are converse.”

“They are nice converse.”

Josten drags a hand across his scarred face, counts to ten in German. Andrew keeps his knowledge of the language in mind. “We are in the middle of a field,” Josten says, dumbfounded.

“We already established that.”

Andrew doesn’t see Josten clear enough to make out his expression, but he can imagine it, his mind supplying Josten’s annoyed gaze. It amuses Andrew enough to forget the dark for a second, forget the horrors that come with it.

\---

Lola’s face remains unmistakeable even to a flawed memory. In Andrew’s, she lives along with the rest of the demons clothed in a human flesh.

Josten looks like he’s in need of a shot, lips in a thin line and eyes wide. He intrigues Andrew to no end, the first interesting thing after years of life slipping through Andrew’s fingers. Kevin has stopped counting, perhaps never even counted.

They watch Lola enter an apartment complex and then they sit in a park across it, where they can hide in the shadows until the time is right. Until Lola leaves to do her dirty business, until they can follow her.

Josten is terrified but sure, sure of taking a life for what has been done to him. It makes it unbearable for Andrew to look at his scars. He cannot help but ask.

“Who was the person you tried to save?”

Josten doesn’t startle at the question like Andrew thought he would; he must have seen it coming. Yet, the expectation doesn’t make answering it any easier. Josten mulls it over, lie forming in his head, slipping onto his tongue.

To Andrew’s surprise, Josten swallows it down and settles for, “A truth for a truth. Deal?”

“How am I supposed to trust a liar?” Andrew asks. All the truths are won over; nothing ever gets handed over, not to people like Andrew.

Josten turns to Andrew, the mask see-through. “I haven’t lied to you,” he says. He doesn’t deny being a liar.

“You see,” Andrew says, fingers curling into fists in his lap, “That is the weird part. Why?”

Josten stands his ground, blue eyes staring into Andrew’s. “I feel like I don’t have to lie to you.”

Andrew pulls back, searches for a hint of dishonesty. He comes up short; the liar plays the truthful card.

“Truth for truth. Who did you try to save?”

Josten adverts his gaze and exhales a shaky breath. Andrew gives him time, waits with patience he fails to recognize from himself.

“My mother,” Josten says at last. “She got badly injured because of me. When I went back to prevent it, I got caught by my father and he killed her.”

Andrew nods, absorbs Josten’s words. He reaches into his pocket for the pack of cigarettes, offers Josten one.

Josten eyes the cigarette with a distant expression. He sticks it between his lips and leans to Andrew for him to light it. Andrew tries not to dwell on it, on Josten’s closed eyes and sharp cheekbones. Andrew’s lighter inch away from his burnt skin, a strange gesture of trust Josten must realise.

“Your turn,” Andrew says, perhaps to distract himself.

Josten leans back, inhales and blows out a small cloud of smoke. He snatches the cigarette of his mouth then, holds it and watches it burn down instead.

“What will you do when I take you back?”

It is an irony, Andrew thinks. Andrew and Josten were brought together by a twisted string of fate. Josten, desperate to save his mother, and Andrew, desperate to kill his. Both failed the first time; both need the other to finish what they started.

Andrew isn’t sure if Josten would find it as amusing as Andrew does.

“There is someone dead I want to kill myself.”

“Who?”

“It’s my turn now,” Andrew says, takes a long drag. At Josten’s accusing glare, he adds, “You have to word your questions better.”

Josten huffs. “Right. Ask me then.”

Andrew would; would, except he isn’t quite sure he wants to know. “I don’t have to ask right now.”

Josten rolls his eyes but accepts Andrew’s rules. “Fine.”

Lola walks out of the building and Andrew stubs his cigarette, Josten already on his feet.

* * *

The time one can spend in the past is unlimited. However, the possibility of meeting one's past self because higher, therefore making it riskier to remain.

* * *

_19:58:27; 300419_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

The cat inhabiting their apartment drops the act of misery and starts to eat again two days later. Andrew watches, with an unreasonable envy, as the animal returns to its normal life and wonders if it truly is that easy. Pick up where he left off, stand up like he never fell in the first place.

Andrew charges his phone and sends an identical text to three numbers, his merry band of bastards.

Aaron, Kevin and Nicky are quiet the whole ride. The sports car forces them to sit squeezed together and Andrew wishes one of them spoke up, argued over the empty seat. But they appear to share the sentiment that speaking is a taboo, that taking the passenger seat would be disgracing Neil’s ghost. The silence respect irritates Andrew, because it offers him no reason to lash out. No escape, no way to let out all of the ugliness pilling inside him.

Andrew wishes he could release his anger without a second thought, but Neil has softened his sharp edges. By now, Andrew knows better than to believe the trio is simply attempting to save their own skin. They care and they mourn, and worst of all, they all miss Neil, painfully aware of his absence.

Eden doesn’t change, hasn’t changed in the years Andrew has known the place.

It is a muscle memory to order drinks, snatch a table, drink in a silence and noise of the ear-tearing music. An empty class joins another in front of Andrew and within an hour, Andrew is building a pyramid. Nicky and Aaron disappear into the crowd, body pressed against body on the dancefloor.

Kevin, in a strange moment of bravery or perhaps solidarity, decides to stay at the table. He drinks less than Andrew. Andrew finds it impossible not to notice; part of him thinks he will always notice Kevin and every little thing that Kevin is made of.

In a usual moment of idiocy, Kevin speaks up. “I’m sorry,” he says.

He doesn’t add ‘for your loss’. Andrew isn’t sure why the words sound more of an apology than a condolence, bitter and guilty. Then again, Kevin is an embodiment of guilt. He is terrified of the dirt gathered beneath his nails, resistant when he scrubs his hands clean. He is desperate to get rid of the evidence of all the wrong he’s done. Sick at the sight of the blood colouring the water of his sink dark red.

Andrew leans across the table, knocking his glass pyramid down in the process. One of the shot glasses rolls off the table and crashes against the floor. Kevin startles. If Andrew was to guess, it wasn’t because of the shards.

“Say, Kevin,” Andrew says, dragging his name out. “What are you not telling me?”

The words slip past Andrew’s lips with a sharp edge to them, acidic. Kevin, who has always been afraid of Andrew for all the wrong reasons, gulps, gives himself away under Andrew’s glare.

“I don’t-“

“Kevin.”

Kevin takes a deep breath, must regret accompanying Andrew then. “I don’t know anything.”

“That is a lie,” Andrew says. He taps his fingers on the sticky table, hand sneaking towards Kevin.

“It is not.”

Andrew remembers Kevin’s skin to be warm, burning even, but memory doesn’t compare to the sensation of Kevin’s rapid pulse under his fingertips. Andrew expects Kevin to say more, to defend his weak lie, but Kevin grows quiet with a hand around his throat.

Andrew holds him in place, tips Kevin’s still full shot glass over with his free hand. The vodka drips down Kevin’s expensive jeans, but Kevin doesn’t turn his gaze away from Andrew. The fear in Kevin’s eyes mixes with his eternal guilt, a pitiful sight for a man of no regret.

“You know better than this,” Andrew says, a warning. A threat. “I don’t like being lied to, so you will tell me what you know and then we can go back to drinking our brains out.”

Kevin nods, once, twice, a jerky gesture with Andrew’s fingers digging into his dark skin. Andrew releases his grip and Kevin’s hands fly to his own throat, but there is nothing, no evidence of Andrew’s unkind touch.

“There were people after him,” Kevin forces out, like he is still being choked. Always one for drama. “People who didn’t necessarily wanted him dead, because he was useful, but suffering.”

Andrew leans back in his seat, wipes the stickiness of the table and the feel of Kevin’s skin off his hand on his jeans. “And you didn’t think it was a good idea to tell me because?”

Kevin fidgets, hands in hair and gone a second later. “Technically, they were after you.”

Andrew pauses then, recalls the words of the Future in his drunken state of mind. He would swear he hears her giggle in his ear when the first pieces of the puzzle fall into each other. Neil, a fool, everything Andrew has ever wanted, everything Andrew would die for, thrown into the emptiness of the outer world. For Andrew.

“My question stands.”

“If I told you, they would-“

“They would be after you too,” Andrew finishes for him, spitting the words out. He doesn’t need Kevin to confirm, doesn’t really need to hear anything else.

Andrew pushes himself away from the table, stumbling when he stands up. Kevin says something that Andrew doesn’t catch, miss in the noise of the club and his own screaming thoughts. His blood boils in his veins, rings in his ears, and he has to get away. Far away, because Andrew cannot sit through a funeral of another time traveller he brought to the grave.

He makes it to the car, locking himself inside. Always locks himself, no matter the fact they make more than one key for every lock.

The world spins and Andrew knows it is no longer the doing of the cheap alcohol poisoning Andrew’s system.

When she comes, unexpected but not entirely unwelcomed, Andrew doesn’t hide his desperation. The Future reaches out and he is the one to grab her hand, hold on tight until the darkness comes for him and he dreams of Neil.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew has always been fascinated by the fire. Neil Josten, whenever Andrew liked it or not, has never been an exception.

_18:12:59; 020618_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

The only way not to get caught is not to leave anything behind, they say. No trace of heavy steps, no drop of blood, not a single hair.

Andrew, bitter deep down to the bone, knows that isn’t always the case. The real key is to target those who will be too paralysed to speak up. Those who would not be believed even if they did dare to share their nightmares.

Josten’s enemies are outlaws of a different kind than Andrew. All Andrew has ever done simply had to be done; all Andrew will ever do is what he musts. They have one important thing in common though – they aren’t ones to mingle with the police. That, for the most part, pushes the fear of the police off the table.

The true threat, however, lingers the same way a bruise lingers on an abused skin.

Josten is ignited by a match, but his enemies run on pure gasoline. Josten counts on that. He counts on their arrogance and on their hunger. He counts on unnatural, on his ability to swim through the flow of the time as he pleases. He counts on Andrew’s ability to remember what others forget.

Worst of all, Josten counts on Andrew to have his back.

“Have you tried using coordinates?” Andrew asks in the silence filling his car, the smoke of cigarettes mixing with Josten’s unsteady breaths.

For once, Josten’s eyes aren’t focused on Andrew. He is wrapped up in the blanket of his own thoughts, has been for at least an hour now. He doesn’t expect Andrew to ask him what troubling his mind. Andrew doesn’t, if only because his own brain is screaming too loud.

Andrew opens the window enough to flick the butt of the cigarette outside and closes the window again.

“Coordinates?”

Andrew kicks his legs up on the dashboard, his boots leaving dark smudges under his heels. “An idea. If it worked, you could control not only when you land, but where. Ensure we don’t end up in the middle of a field again.”

It is foolish to think about shared future, to assume Josten won’t get tired of Andrew in the next three days. He has already lasted longer than Andrew predicted.

Josten, for all his smoke related melancholy and hundred years old sorrow, laughs. It catches Andrew off the guard, the genuiness of the sound startling him into ugly flashbacks.

“I can try,” Josten says. His voice tugs Andrew back into the present.

Josten turns in his seat to face Andrew and offers the rest of his cigarette, eyebrows disappearing in the mess of the ginger hair falling into his forehead. A hint of smile lingers on his face, softening his features into someone Andrew barely recognizes.

Andrew has never wanted to be somewhere more than there, in a cloudy car with a boy born of his day dreams.

Andrew hesitates for a second, a second Josten must notice. Not that it matters anymore. Whatever is pulling Andrew closer is tugging Josten in as well, that much Andrew can tell.

“You should,” Andrew says and leans down. He takes Josten’s cigarette between his teeth, his lips brushing the rough skin of Josten’s fingers along the way.

Josten’s hand stays hanging in the space between them for a second too long and Andrew knows he’s won this round. He straightens up, victory blooming deep in his chest. When he takes a drag of the cigarette, he swears he tastes Josten on his tongue.

By the time Andrew dares to look at Josten again, Josten is scribbling numbers on his arms, the ancient phone lit in his lap. Andrew drinks in the revealed strip of scarred skin, from Josten’s wrist up to his bicep.

“Has he done all of these?” Andrew asks, fingers stopping mere inch from the old wounds.

Most of them seem like badly healed cuts, but some remind Andrew more of a lighter pressed against Josten’s body. Considering his cheek, it is a possibility. Andrew remembers his own lighter right in front of Josten’s face and his fist clenches around nothing.

“No,” Josten says as his eyes drift to Andrew’s hand. “The others had joined in time from time.”

Andrew has nothing to say to that.

“If this goes wrong,” Josten says, tone too light for the atmosphere they have created, “The blame is on you.”

“You will kill me first,” Andrew says, an attempt of a joke, but his words come out strained by the heaviness of the prospect.

“Not if I die first,” Josten says, no room for an argument.

Andrew opts not to reply. He watches as Josten writes the last number down and dissolves into thin air before Andrew’s eyes. Andrew doesn’t travel with him, but his stomach clenches all the same.

A knock on the window brings Andrew’s attention outside the car, where Josten now stands. He wears a tense grin, dripping wet hair plastered to his skin. Andrew rolls the window down.

“It worked,” Josten says. His eyes don’t reflect the joy in his voice. “You are a genius.”

Andrew only registers the compliment the next day, when his mind betrays him and slips to the thoughts of Josten, Josten, Josten.

-

For all his drama about the perfect memory, Josten isn’t exactly forgetful. They spend two weeks following Lola until they find an opening, a day when Lola is vulnerable to their plan. They return to the day over and over again, making sure nothing can surprise them. Josten could recite Lola’s routine of that day in his sleep, Andrew is sure.

Josten is buzzing with a wild energy barely tamed under his skin. He is hungry the same way his enemies are, ready to sink their teeth into his prey. The only thing keeping him in check are his scars, a cruel reminder of what his impatience has led him to the last time.

Andrew isn’t sure why he’s surprised when Josten presents him a clear plan of action. Andrew spends most of the night nit-picking it, to find a loose thread that could unravel the whole plan. He comes up empty.

Andrew retreats to his sacred place, a roof of an abandoned building not far from their house. He stands on the edge of the roof, where the railing has been long torn off the concrete. He stares down at the still asleep city and waits for the waves of panic, to feel anything other than Josten.

The fear doesn’t squeeze him as tight as it used to. Now, it reminds him more of the time travelling. Andrew will never get used to the unease of it, his body protesting against the unnatural force.

Andrew takes a step back from the edge and lights a cigarette, bringing it to his lips.

The door squeaks behind Andrew, loud enough to alarm him. Heart up in his throat, Andrew turns to find Josten there, like a devil summoned. Andrew would laugh at the comparation – the devil, too, was the most alluring one of them all, guiding the stray souls straight to their downfall.

Andrew fights down a sigh and stares Josten down, hoping to scare him away. Scare him away for good. Josten, of course, is no longer scared of stares. He is no longer scared of Andrew.

“Are you here to finally kill me?” Andrew asks, because he cannot stand the look in Josten’s eyes as he steps to Andrew.

Josten smiles the tiny smile of his. Andrew would miss it if he wasn’t already looking for it.

“I have a question to ask,” Josten says and the smile slips off his lips. He sits down, lets his legs hang over the edge of the roof. “So, I need you to ask me first.”

Andrew does sigh this time. He settles next to Josten, a good foot of space between them. It feels wrong, just like Josten in Andrew’s hiding spot feels right. Illogical.

Right then, Andrew settles on one answer he needs. “Is she going to be the first person you kill?”

Josten leans back on his forearms, his giant hoodie all bunched up. A frown wrinkles his face, pulls at his scarred skin. Andrew wonders what the scars would feel like under his cold fingertips.

“Yes,” Josten says. The word comes out as nothing more than a breath tearing its way out of his lungs.

Andrew nods, neither relieved nor disappointed. He isn’t sure if there is any corresponding emotion to feel when the soon to be killer shows off his still pristine hands.

“What happened to Nicky?” Josten asks, a question Andrew should have expected but did not. “What really happened, because there are too many holes in that story.”

Josten turns and catches Andrew’s eyes, not giving Andrew a chance to dodge. Andrew makes the terrifying discovery that he doesn’t mind to be seen by Josten.

He digs his nails into his thighs over the thick denim of his jeans. Josten waits, expression calm. Like he already knows, only wants to hear the story from Andrew.

“I happened,” Andrew says, the barest truth there is.

He takes another drag of his cigarette, his movements frantic enough for even him to be aware of them. His hand quivers when he brings it to his lips. It is always his body what betrays him in the end.

“We were at the club and I was supposed to look out for him. For everyone. But I didn’t.”

“Minyard-“

Andrew reaches out his free hand and slaps it over Josten’s warm mouth. If he is to tell, he needs to do so on his own terms, without compassion. Without sympathy he doesn’t deserve.

Josten doesn’t tense under the touch. He almost relaxes Andrew’s hand, nodding for Andrew to continue. Andrew yanks his hand away as if burned by Josten’s warmth.

“When I realised he was gone, it was too late. When I found him, he was on the ground. Lying in a puddle of his own blood.”

Josten’s gaze shifts into something sad, a hundred years old sorrow bottled up and drowning in the ocean of his eyes. Andrew doesn’t comprehend how he is still capable of such feeling.

“He was attacked, and you blame yourself,” Josten says. The softness of his words matches the softness of his eyes, irritating to no end.

Andrew itches to rip Josten’s heart out of his ribcage, study it until he understands why it isn’t made of stone the same way Andrew’s is.

“They smashed his legs for flirting with a guy,” Andrew bites out, learning dangerously close to Josten. Threatening, the only defence mechanism Andrew has in him. “I should have been there to stop them. To make them fucking pay.”

“I think,” Josten starts and clears his throat, like he is choking on his words. “I think I know the real reason you blame yourself.”

“Delight me.”

“You blame yourself for what happened to Nicky because you believe it should have been you.”

Andrew snorts, an ugly sound even to his ears. “You think I am some sort of a martyr?”

“No,” Josten says. “But you believe it was Nicky instead of you that night. And that doesn’t go well with the kind of man you are. You would die for them, over and over.”

Andrew doesn’t think. He only reacts, fingers quick to dive under his sleeve and faster to press a blade under Josten’s chin. It is the most frightened animals who attack first, Josten must know. Being known terrifies Andrew, Josten must know.

“I believe you shouldn’t stick your nose in my business,” Andrew hisses, Josten’s steady breathing hitting his cheeks.

Josten swallows down around nothing, Andrew’s knife moving with it. Josten remains still, looks at Andrew the same way he would look at someone offering him a bouquet of roses. Andrew hates him then.

“Am I wrong though?” Josten asks.

It hurts way worse than a fist to the gut. It aches like an old wound that never closed, bleeding for the rest of time.

“You are not,” Andrew says, because he is not a man of lies.

“I admire that,” Josten whispers, like Andrew doesn’t have a blade against his neck. Like Andrew is someone to be admired in the first place.

Andrew’s stomach turns upside down.

“Get the fuck out,” Andrew says, but he cannot move.

Josten just continues looking, staring right into Andrew’s soul. “Andrew-“

“Get the fuck out,” Andrew snarls. He draws his knife away from Josten’s neck, tucks it back under his sleeve.

Josten doesn’t push any further. He gathers himself and leaves Andrew behind to his thoughts, his hope twisted thoughts.

-

“You don’t have to do this,” Josten says.

Andrew stops to stare at him over the hood of the car Josten has stolen somewhere, the door already open. Josten stands by his words, gaze hard on Andrew’s face. He reminds Andrew of the first time they met, a terrified little thing hiding behind icy eyes.

The icy eyes are the only thing that hasn’t changed since then. He confuses Andrew to no end.

“What?”

Josten sighs, tugging a black beanie down over the mess of ginger hair. It highlights his scarred cheekbones under the streetlamp, more distracting than any exposed skin could be.

Andrew receives no answer. Josten kicks the wheel of the car instead, once, twice.

“Josten,” Andrew says, and it sounds all kinds of wrong. Wrong when Andrew’s name has slipped past Josten’s lips just the other day.

“I don’t want to drag you through the hell with me if this goes down bad,” Josten says. A complicated emotion shadows his expression, a mix of worry and care Andrew doesn’t understand.

“This is not going to work without me,” Andrew says. “We both know that.”

Josten sighs again and stomps to Andrew. He stops close enough to force Andrew tilt his head up to look at him.

“What if it doesn’t work even with you? Then what? We both die?”

Andrew has thought of that. He has imagined Lola killing them, her cruel laugh another one to store in the section of his childhood memories. He has imagined them not escaping the car soon enough to avoid the crash. He has imagined Josten’s features painted dark red, the picture perfect because Andrew has already seen it for real.

Andrew has imagined a million different scenarios, a million different deaths by Josten’s side. None of them included regret.

“I have nothing to lose,” Andrew says, an unadorned truth.

It sets Josten off. He punches the hood of the car. The thud echoes around them, through wide fields and an empty road stretching for miles.

“I do, Andrew,” Josten all but bites out.

“What do you have left?” Andrew asks, to push him over the edge, to see something real.

“You,” Josten says, the venom washed out of his voice by something soft. “I could lose you.”

Andrew has imagined a million death, but his heart of stone shattering into pieces has not been one of them. Andrew finds shelter in Josten’s hatred, because Josten has enough of it in him to hate for both of them. Josten’s tenderness exposes Andrew, strips him off all his armour, sharp words and sharper blades.

“I hate you,” Andrew says, a wonky wall between himself and Josten’s outstretched hand. He could be holding a gun in the other one, hiding it behind his back. “Why ask for my help when you chicken out the last minute?”

“I can never help myself,” Josten says, but the answer tells Andrew nothing.

It tells him everything. Josten’s eyes, an ocean of grief and longing, dance across Andrew’s face, from his brow to his lips. It is a sign if Andrew has ever seen one, so clear. Unhidden.

Andrew has always excelled at ignoring signs. “I’m not going back on my word,” he says and steps away from Josten. He throws himself in the driver’s seat before he can throw himself at Josten. Both options result in a death anyway.

If Josten lingers on the spot for a second too long, it is a confession that Andrew refuses to accept.

-

Andrew understands, rationally, that in order to transport them both, Josten needs to be touching him. Andrew knows, rationally, that holding hands is the easiest and the least harmful touch for both of them.

As they sit in the car and follow Lola down the empty road, Andrew knows, without a doubt, that both of them are huge liars after all.

By the time Andrew’s mind catches up with his body, frozen in fear, his hand is already halfway through the space between him and Josten. He reaches into nothing to find Josten there, way too soon to blame it on the means of time travel. Josten squeezes Andrew’s hand, the gesture born of affection and dressed as a signal.

Andrew presses the gas pedal down.

He closes his eyes and his stomach rolls inside his body, the feeling familiar in its unpleasantness. When Andrew forces himself to open his eyes, to check if they escaped the arms of the death, Josten is there. They stand a good fifty feet away from the road, in a muddy field. Irony at its finest.

The car Josten has stolen crashes into Lola’s Mercedes in front of their eyes. Josten has took them a mere second back, to satisfy his need to watch the events unfold. The impact is enough to send Lola’s car rolling off the road, landing on the roof.

Andrew squeezes Josten’s hand, a fear masked as an encouragement. Josten lets go.

The following minutes fly by, playing in front of Andrew like a bad movie. Lola’s car bursts into flames with a help from Josten. The stolen car lies not far away, trashed to no point of return. Andrew still feels like he’s sitting there, in the driver’s seat.

Andrew has always been fascinated by the fire. Drawn to the warmth of it, amazed by the sparks of a lighter. Astounded something so beautiful could destroy and kill.

Andrew has always been fascinated by the fire, but tonight, he cannot bring himself to look at it. Not when their actions weight down on him, pushes his feet deeper in the ground. He lights a cigarette, hopes the nicotine calms his trembling hands.

Andrew has always been fascinated by the fire. Neil Josten, whenever Andrew liked it or not, has never been an exception.

Josten stands next to Andrew, face blank and eyes overflowing with emotion. He is pretty in a plain daylight and gorgeous under the starts, but nothing compares to the fire flashing across his cheeks. The fire he himself created, hatred poured into gasoline. He is nothing like himself in that moment, the blue of his eyes reflecting red.

The cigarette tastes like nothing but ash between Andrew’s lips.

Josten must be reading Andrew’s mind. He plugs the cigarette from Andrew’s mouth, brings it to his own lips. He takes a drag and blows the smoke into Andrew’s face. Himself again.

There is a moment of reluctance, a brief moment when Josten stares at Andrew and looks young, so unsure of it all. Guilty. It is over in a heartbeat and Josten throws what remains of the cigarette towards the flames. A waste of good nicotine.

Josten must be reading Andrew’s mind – or he simply knows, the same way Andrew knows. The only path is forward. The thing between them is inevitable, meant to be since the very beginning.

If Andrew is bound to get burnt for playing with the fire his entire life, he might as well let it consume him whole. Andrew has imagined a million deaths. He cannot imagine a better way to ignite than tasting Josten’s lips.

“Tell me no,” Andrew says, because he needs to. He needs to hear ‘no’ more than he craves to hear the opposite. ‘No’ is the only way for his soul to be saved.

“Yes,” Josten breathes out instead.

He gazes at Andrew, one cheek burnt and the other cut, undeniably beautiful in the ruined skin. He doesn’t surge forward, doesn’t move at all. He doesn’t touch Andrew, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

Understood. Known, the little voice in Andrew’s head sings. Andrew never stood a chance.

“Andrew, yes,” Josten repeats, the desperation spilling in his tone.

Andrew kisses him.

Andrew kisses Neil, who had his heart ripped out the same way Andrew did. Andrew kisses Neil, a boy pulled right out of Andrew’s day dreams, impossible.

Andrew’s hands fly to Neil’s face but refuse to touch, not until Neil leans his burnt cheek into Andrew’s open palm. Andrew allows his fingers wander, across the scars and under Neil’s beanie, through the curly hair. He settles his hand on the back of Neil’s neck, rubs his thumb against the tender skin. A silent apology for what was, for whatever is yet to come.

Neil doesn’t kiss Andrew. Neil lets Andrew kiss him, move him as Andrew pleases. It is all Andrew has ever needed from people before Neil. It is nowhere near enough when it comes to Neil.

Andrew catches up too slow, mind clouded by the smoke and Neil. He drags his lips away from Neil’s only to say, out loud, “Yes.”

Neil kisses him back. He hums into Andrew’s mouth and despite himself, Andrew pulls him closer.

He pours the words he could never say into a single kiss, perhaps the only chance he will get. He kisses Neil _thank you_ and _sorry_, he mouths his _never_ and _forever_ along Neil’s jaw. He keeps on pulling Neil closer until they stand chest to chest and that is too much.

Andrew detaches himself, gasping for air. Neil takes a step, two back, like he’s done something wrong.

Andrew turns away, cannot look at him for a second longer. Cannot stand the understanding written on Neil’s face, the worry he’s overstepped his boundaries when Andrew took a hammer and crushed them. Andrew stares at the fire, gut twisted.

“Why?”

Neil knows what Andrew is asking; there isn’t any way to misinterpret the question.

“It’s that obvious?” Neil asks back, because it is.

* * *

One does not age in the past point of their timeline.

* * *

_21:49:18; 130519_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

She remains silent for a long time.

It gives Andrew all the time in the universe to think, to doubt. To doubt what she calls the truth, possible and yet untouchable.

Neil’s ghost haunts their apartment. Andrew keeps on finding things he thought of as long lost, things that he doesn’t even recognize. Neil’s ghost lies in the bed when Andrew wakes, brain too groggy to catch up with the previous days. Neil’s ghost lingers in the living room, in sports magazines and in old photos. Andrew gathers them all and stuffs them into a box, only to find them in a different place the following morning.

It is impossible to mourn when the Future offered a hope of reunion and it is impossible to move forward when the time keeps on rewinding itself back.

Andrew has signed up for a lifetime of an inconsistency the first time he held Neil’s hand, he knows. Only when Neil is gone, in a place Andrew cannot follow him into, the tangled string of time is clear to Andrew’s eyes.

Andrew waits for the memory of Neil’s basket to fade, but it is tattooed on the back of his eyelids. It is there when Andrew sleeps and it is there when Andrew keeps himself awake.

The stray cat, who has somehow sneaked into their apartment and made a life for itself in the living room, refuses to leave. Andrew tries to lure it outside and he threatens it when he loses his nerves, but the animal stays. Stubborn and unbothered at the same time, it sleeps on the sofa and steals Andrew’s socks. Used to him in a strange way.

A week after many failed attempts, Andrew turns to force. However, when he reaches for the cat, it doesn’t fight. It settles in Andrew’s arms and rests its head against the sleeve of Andrew’s shirt, eyes closing.

Andrew’s chest tightens, breathing heaving. His heart breaks for a reason Andrew cannot grasp. Someone chooses that moment to knock on the door, pulling Andrew out of his head.

Kevin has always had a terrible timing.

“What,” Andrew says as he pushes the door open, the car purring in his arms.

Kevin stands much smaller than he is, head ducked and shoulders hunched. Andrew hates him then, as he always does. Hates Kevin’s cowardness and hates his guilt. Hates Kevin for never using his abilities and hates him for letting Neil die.

“I came to talk,” Kevin says.

Andrew rolls his eyes and places the cat by Kevin’s feet, fully intending to close the door into their faces, when Kevin catches him off the guard.

“Why are you leaving Sir out?”

Andrew freezes, hand on the door handle. “Excuse me?”

“Sir,” Kevin says, as if he were speaking to a child. At Andrew’s glare, he clears his throat and changes his tone before he loses his voice altogether under Andrew’s hand. “Why are you throwing out your own cat?”

“My own-“

Cat.

Andrew leaves them both by the door. He storms inside, heart sinking. When he looks around, when he actually looks around, the clues are all over the place. Food bowls on the floor and cat food in the cabinet. A blanket, full of cat hair, shoved in the corner of the living room.

Kevin and the cat, both uninvited, invite themselves inside.

A panic now replaces all the other emotions, seeping deep in Andrew’s bones and chilling his blood.

Andrew finds more things that have escaped his attention, things that have escaped his memory. A hoodie that is way too huge, empty notebooks, running shoes that Andrew would never put on – could never put on. They are three sizes bigger.

Kevin, like a lost puppy tailing the first person it sees, is there to witness Andrew snap. He barely dodges the things Andrew throws against the wall, clothes and pens and everything that must be Neil’s.

“Fucking-“

“Andrew?”

Andrew doesn’t remember any of the items, and yet the perfect memory doesn’t fail him as the frightening realisation dawns on him.

He turns to Kevin, venom on the tongue and a dagger in the chest. “I am forgetting Neil.”

-

Old habits die hard, Andrew would know the best.

He and Kevin share a bottle of vodka, drown their thoughts together the way they used to. Andrew doesn’t find it in him to worry about Kevin’s alcoholic tendencies, not that particular night.

Andrew goes to the bed alone. He lets Kevin share the sofa with the cat, drunk into oblivion. Andrew doesn’t end the nigh that lucky. He lies with the ghost of Neil, staring at the ceiling.

The next morning, Kevin looks like a shit and Andrew relishes in it.

With a stomach emptied and the cup of coffee half drank, Kevin slumps into one of the armchairs in the living room, the cat jumping into his lap. Used to him.

Andrew stands in the doorframe, giving Kevin enough space in case he pisses Andrew off.

“Neil is what I came to talk about,” Kevin says, words slurring together the slightest. “I think he was lying to you about certain things.”

Andrew huffs, because what else is there left for him to do. Neil was a liar through and through, no matter how much he might have trusted Andrew. Lying meant his survival, the only thing that he had in the sick world of his.

It didn’t matter though, because Neil was telling Andrew enough. He shared the important parts and bits of himself. His fears and his demons in exchange for Andrew’s. They could never tell each other everything, not with the kind of lives they led.

“Lying about what?” Andrew asks anyway, to humour Kevin.

“I think,” Kevin starts and cuts himself off, sipping the now cold coffee. “I think the Neil we knew was the future Neil. That this wasn’t – “

“Wasn’t his rightful place in the timeline,” Andrew finishes for him. The idea doesn’t sound as far stretched as it should. Andrew has heard - has seen - what Neil was capable of. “What leads you to that conclusion?”

Kevin sighs and clicks his tongue, like he is only now figuring it all out. “Didn’t you ever feel like .. Like he knew too much? Too easily? Like he has already lived through some things?”

Andrew entertains the thought. He thinks about how easily Neil made a home for himself in Andrew’s chest, how each of his plans worked out until the very last one. How Neil knew Andrew before even getting to know him.

“I remembered this one time we talked and he just .. Knew what I was going to say, even though we barely talked before. At the time I just shrugged it off, but now..”

Andrew’s gaze falls on the cat, so content with Kevin out of all the people. At home with Andrew, out of all the people.

“I don’t magically know when others change something in the past,” Kevin says. “But there is a way to tell. When there are inconsistencies in the timelines. Normal people usually overlook them.”

Andrew doesn’t bother asking Kevin what triggered his discovery, a fact Andrew was already aware of. Kevin tells him anyway.

“I have recently found something that shouldn’t even exist anymore. Neil must have touched my timeline while changing yours.”

Andrew frowns and moves to lie down on the sofa, arms under his head. “We changed a shit ton of timelines, mine included.”

“I think he changed yours without you knowing about it. If he did and never told you, you would never realise it.”

“Why would he do that though, Kevin? What would he change without telling me?”

Kevin groans. “That we will never know. It is impossible to track down the chances someone makes.”

“Then there is no point of talking about it,” Andrew concludes.

“There is,” Kevin says, voice steady.

Andrew looks at him and Kevin holds his gaze for once.

“I think he tried multiple times. But the more you change in one timeline, the more unstable it becomes. The last attempt didn’t work out and cost him a life.”

Andrew sits up, the words of the Future coming to him like he heard them just minutes ago. Neil’s voice follows, echoing in his head until he connects the dots drawn out for him.

“Oh, Kevin,” Andrew says, “He didn’t fail. He got exactly what he wanted.”

“What was it?”

Andrew wants to laugh. He wants to destroy things, burn something. He wants to scream at top of his lungs for not realising sooner.

“Him instead of me.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron sneers. “Brave of you to still call yourself human.”
> 
> Andrew considers the statement for longer than he would like to. The smell of smoke still clings to his clothes, to his bare skin. He can still taste Neil on the tip of his tongue, the fire around them be damned. 
> 
> “Brave of you to assume you can separate yourself from the last bit of humanity she left in you.”
> 
> Aaron laughs, bitter and rotted to the bone. “There is nothing left of her and there is nothing left of me.”

_23:07:45; 180518_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

Andrew stands at the door of Nicky’s house and expects the worst.

The night has long casted a shadow over everything and the light at the porch has been broken for months now, leaving Andrew in the dark. Nicky has promised to change the bulb, but never had, never got the chance again.

Andrew awaits unimaginable because the universe works that way. It gives a hint of good and then tears everything out of Andrew’s grip. In Andrew’s world, filled with violence and fire, the good is hard to define.

Good is the door still locked in the morning. Good is another cigarette and Nicky’s annoying laughter echoing through the house. Good is, even in a world this messed up, kissing the boy Andrew likes.

Andrew expects the worst, but only finds Aaron sitting by Nicky’s table. He doesn’t acknowledge Andrew, too busy tossing a bottle of pills up in the air and catching it. On repeat. Without a doubt, he’s been at it for hours.

As all the souls bonded to Andrew’s, Aaron is ruined, scarred beyond repair. High on medication he doesn’t need and low on the ghost tugging at his sleeve. He’s the embodiment of everything Andrew once regretted. He’s Andrew’s price for his fears, for turning his back when he was too young to understand how the world worked.

He’s nothing more than a stranger with Andrew’s face. Andrew isn’t sure how much of a person is left in the shelf of Aaron’s body. He doesn’t know how much of Aaron survived the years shared with his mother.

Andrew and Aaron are the poorest match out there, full of hate for the reflection they see in each other.

Andrew, whose demons changed every month or two, each worse than the last. Aaron, who lived with the same monster his whole life. Andrew, who hoped someone would pick him over their own blood. Aaron, who loved his mother only because she was called that on a paper.

Andrew and Aaron are the mirrors to each other, loathing each other because there is no way around.

Andrew cannot overlook the way Aaron shrinks in fear when Andrew erupts in a fit of anger, one that Aaron has tattooed on the back of his eyelids. Andrew is aware of the way he flinches when Aaron’s moves are too quick, too sudden, too close. They cannot deny their past and they cannot deny being the sons of their mother.

They share Nicky’s house like ghosts, and they share blood they both wish to spill.

“Andrew,” Aaron speaks up as Andrew is about to pass the kitchen.

Andrew stops in the doorframe and stares his brother down, the effects of his medication obvious in the lose set of Aaron’s jaw, in the blank look in his eyes.

“What.”

“Were you with that shithead again?” Aaron asks, unbothered as he misses the bottle and it crashes against the floor, rolling under Nicky’s flower table.

“You mean Josten, I assume,” Andrew says. Neil’s name slips past his lips with such ease that even in this state, Aaron must notice.

He does. He scowls, face twisted with disgust Andrew didn’t know their faces were capable of. Aaron was always better at controlling his facial features, better at owning Andrew’s face.

“Why?”

The one worded question hides a million others, million things Aaron wants to know about Andrew but isn’t willing to ask out loud. Aaron isn’t prepared to know Andrew. Not when it could mean losing the hatred he saves for his brother, the only emotion he finds comfort in. In a twisted way, he reminds Andrew of Neil.

“You see,” Andrew says, leans his shoulder against the wall, “Sometimes us humans are in need of some decent company.”

Aaron sneers at that. “Brave of you to still call yourself human.”

Andrew considers the statement for longer than he would like to. The smell of smoke still clings to his clothes, to his bare skin. He can still taste Neil on the tip of his tongue, the fire around them be damned.

“Brave of you to assume you can separate yourself from the last bit of humanity she left in you.”

Aaron laughs, bitter and rotted to the bone. “There is nothing left of her and there is nothing left of me.”

Andrew grits his teeth before he can bite out the first thing on his mind, one that would only complicate his plans. He doesn’t recognize the patience. Instead, he settles for, “She left just enough for me to destroy and once I do, we can talk.”

Aaron doesn’t have a remark for that. Andrew watches him slipping away, drowning in what he cannot erase. Andrew hasn’t seen the scene with his own eyes, but he can imagine it clearly enough; the corpse of Aaron’s mother, overdosed, and Aaron standing over her, a bloody knife in his hand. Aaron, barely eighteen, leaving over thirty stab wounds in the cold body of his abusive mother.

She drove the poor boy crazy, Andrew has heard them all say. He wonders why they were so surprised.

Andrew cannot return to the spring of the river and stop the flow of misery at the source, but he can put a satisfying end to it. The death of Aaron’s mother won’t be written down in history as an overdose. Andrew will not let her escape the pains of living with the only thing she ever valued.

Andrew leaves Aaron to his drugged mania and blurred shape of reality. Not for much longer.

He swears he hears Aaron crash one of Nicky’s pots, and he hopes it wasn’t the aloe one. Nicky had nursed the plant back to health, even if Andrew deemed it impossible. The irony doesn’t escape Andrew, although he isn’t one to appreciate it.

The worst is still yet to come, and Andrew tosses and tosses in his bed, unable to sleep for a long time.

He wakes with fire licking his skin and blue behind his eyelids. Differing between memories and dreams has always been a momentary struggle for Andrew in the mornings, the two fading into each other. That day, it’s Andrew’s hands on Kevin’s throat in contrast to them on Neil’s ruined cheeks.

The smell of gasoline lingers on Andrew’s skin even after a shower. It always will. Andrew stands in front of a fogged mirror, unable to look at himself even after all those years, and wonders how anyone else can. Andrew wills himself not to think of the one concrete name and for once, his brain obeys.

As he steps out of the bathroom, exhausted and his skin rubbed raw, he barely avoids colliding with Nicky.

Nicky is all smiles, light on his feet. “Let’s go out tonight,” he says, voice full of cheer Andrew doesn’t understand.

Doesn’t understand but doesn’t hate in that very moment. “Alright,” he finds himself says, against all odds.

Nicky grins and leaves Andrew behind. Andrew watches him disappear, drawn to the skip in his cousin’s walk for a strange reason.

Andrew would shrug it off after a whole life of paranoia. Would shrug it off if he didn’t walk into his room to find a keychain from his childhood. A black cat.

Dirty and worse for the wear, it lies on his bedsheets, an unforgettable present from Andrew’s first foster family. He was only five when the woman placed it into his open palm, with an easy smile and a promise soon to be broken. Andrew proceeded to carry the cat with him for three whole weeks, everywhere he went.

In the middle of the fourth week, he was deemed unwanted and moved to another pretty house. The black cat should have warned Andrew, but what does five years old know about bad signs.

Andrew is sure he threw the cat away, tosses it into a river or maybe buried it into a mud just outside the forest. Andrew is sure the keychain shouldn’t be lying on his bed, as if placed there by a careful hand.

Andrew picks it up and studies it, all the scratches and the torn plastic ear. Andrew got rid of it while the cat was still in a perfect condition, but it undeniably belongs to Andrew. After all, he engraved his initial A in it with a kitchen knife when no one was around. The stupid cat keychain was the first thing Andrew really owned.

Now, it looks out of place in Andrew’s half empty bedroom, bearing almost as many scars as Andrew does.

Andrew doesn’t have an explanation for the sudden visit of a past ghost, but he refuses to be haunted by those who didn’t even matter. His eyes don’t leave the keychain as he reaches in the pocket of his sweatpants for the lighter.

He holds the cat above the flame, and he doesn’t say goodbye for the second time as he watches the plastic melt. He throws the remains of the cat into the bin and doesn’t regret destroying what is left of his past.

He swears he hears a female giggle ringing in his ears.

\--

“Everyone in the back,” Andrew bites out when he’s had about enough of the fight for the passenger seat.

No one of Andrew family ever wants to sit in the middle back seat, stained for good with god knows what. The passenger seat is as much of a win as a death wish. It means freedom and it means being the first one to taste Andrew’s anger if anyone pisses him off.

Neil stands aside, a noticeable distance between him and the glorious trio that claims to be Andrew’s close ones. At least Nicky does. Neil watches them all with a strange smile on his face, like there’s a sign above their heads and only he can read it. He wears that look a lot lately, often enough for Andrew to categorize it as a pattern.

At the sound of Andrew’s voice, Neil’s gaze slips towards Andrew and raises a single brow, a question they both already know the answer to.

“Neil in the front,” Andrew mutters and slumps in the driver seat, shutting the door behind him.

Andrew doesn’t need to see Neil to see the smirk replacing his smile. Neil takes the passenger seat without any commentary, but his eyes speak for him. Scream how much he wants to rub the development in the trio’s faces.

Neil treats Andrew’s family like old friends, bickers with them when he deems it appropriate and stays silent when Andrew is a step away from losing his nerve. It alerts Andrew and it calms him down at the same time.

Nicky, the bravest and the stupidest of the bunch, grumbles about unfairness until Andrew blows the volume of the radio up. Even then, Nicky shoot a meaningful look at Andrew through the rear-view mirror.

Andrew ignores him and it feels kind of wrong.

“Get the fuck out,” Andrew sighs in front of Eden, already fed up for the night.

“I’m not babysitting Kevin for you,” Aaron shouts over the terrible pop song. For not receiving any answer, he slams the door and kicks it for a good measure.

“Fucker,” Neil says, still plastered in his seat. His expression remains calm, the way it’s been the whole drive to the club. It seems too fake to be true; too good to be true when it comes to a man like Neil Josten.

Andrew stares at him, waits for him to follow the rest. He doesn’t. Instead, he reaches for the radio and turns it off.

“I want to talk about something,” he says as Andrew looks for an empty spot at the parking lot. He settles for a spot at the very back, not a single care if the shit box of a car is parked straight or not.

Andrew shuts the engine off and shifts in his seat to face Neil. He’s wearing Andrew’s clothes again, black and tight in the right places, showing off Neil’s lean arms and muscled thighs. Andrew must be a masochist, after all.

Neil is all cold eyes and ruined skin Andrew cannot get enough of, oddly drawn to the evidence that Neil Josten has survived everything thrown at him so far. Neil is everything Andrew could dream off, the lines of his face sharp and his words sharper.

“Right now?” Andrew asks, hand already on its way towards Neil’s burnt cheek.

Neil leans into Andrew’s touch without a second thought, like Andrew’s fingers were capable of bringing him comfort. They are not, Andrew knows. He runs the tip of his finger along Neil’s jawline, digging into the soft skin and tracing bone underneath.

“I guess it can wait a little longer,” Neil says and sighs, pressing his cheek against Andrew’s palm harder.

“Sure?”

Neil nods. “What about a head start?”

Andrew, the biggest fool of them all, cannot help himself. He surges forward and swallows down the echo of Neil’s yes, given on autopilot.

Neil raises his hands in the air and folds them behind his head, his motions slow and clear. All for Andrew, considerate and thoughtful. It drives Andrew crazy, enough to send his free hand searching for Neil’s wrist. He grabs it and squeezes until Neil’s whole arm goes slack in Andrew’s grip.

Andrew thinks about it for two whole seconds before he brings Neil’s hand to his hair.

“Only here,” Andrew says against Neil’s lips and Neil understands. He tangles his long fingers in Andrew’s hair, doesn’t pull or hold him down. Only anchors himself.

Andrew kisses him harder.

They find the troubled bastards inside almost half an hour later. They’ve had a different kind of a head start, if the glasses in front of Kevin are anything to go by. Andrew doesn’t bother asking whenever he got any help from Aaron and Nicky.

Andrew and Neil take the seats Nicky saved for them, the huge grin still on his face. Nicky, although unlikely, turned out the best of them. Nicky, unlike the rest of them, was able to continue to live.

Andrew snatches two drinks from the tray on the table and offers one to Neil, who shakes his head.

“I will drive back,” Neil says.

He is referring to the fiasco of the first night out, Andrew’s hazy mind and the truck barely passing them. The memory flashes before Andrew’s eyes, followed by the last seconds behind the wheel last night. The two fade into each other, too blended at the edges for Andrew to tell them apart.

Andrew downs both of the drinks, to wash down the taste of Neil so it doesn’t distract him from keeping an eye on his merry band.

“Whose turn is it?” Neil asks hours later, when Nicky and Aaron are off to the dancefloor and Kevin snores at the table.

“Mine,” Andrew say. “Are you in a state to answer?”

Neil chuckles, raises his soda can. “Yes and I take that as the question.”

Andrew doesn’t grace him with a reply, only grabs the last shot left on the table. “Fucker.”

Neil shrugs, his shoulders wider in the tight sweatshirt Andrew forced him into. He didn’t protest this time, only greeted Nicky in the hall and headed for the bathroom. Familiar with Andrew, familiar with his antics.

Andrew is too mesmerized by how well the damn thing fits Neil to register the question. When he does, he thumps the shot glass down hard enough for Kevin to stir from his nap.

“Andrew,” Neil says. Andrew has never heard his name spoken so tenderly, almost enough to distract him from the way Neil looks at him, like a plea. “What are you planning on doing in the past?”

Andrew stares at Kevin, whose eyes dart from Andrew to Neil, heavy with sleep. Andrew waves his hand and Kevin groans, but gathers himself and stumbles towards the dancefloor.

Andrew turns to Neil to be met with the look, one Andrew guesses Neil doesn’t quite control. That doesn’t make the softness of Neil’s gaze any more logical, any easier to receive.

“I plan on killing my mother,” Andrew says, not one to lie.

Neil’s expression tightens, mouth pressed in a straight line.

Andrew raises an eyebrow at him, recognizes himself mimicking Neil and doesn’t stop himself. He challenges Neil to pick up a fight, to disagree with him.

Instead, Neil closes his eyes and sucks in a shaky breath, his fists clenched where they lie on the table. There is no surprise or shock on his face, only something akin a disappointment melting into an acceptance.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Neil nods, opening his eyes again. They are degrees colder. “Some things cannot be changed,” Neil says, more to himself than to Andrew.

Before Andrew can bite out any harsh words to push Neil over the edge, Nicky skips to the table. He takes Kevin’s previous seat and knocks on the wooden surface of the table.

“So,” Nicky speaks up when both Andrew and Neil look at him, “Neil, I’m really glad Andrew brought you along. I never thought he would make a friend on his own!”

Andrew glares at his cousin, but Neil just smiles that tiny smile of his, entirely lovely. Wasted in a dirty, dark club.

“I’m glad too, actually,” Neil says, no hint of lie in his voice.

He smiles like that and the world doesn’t stop, the club around them loud and dark, but Andrew-

Andrew feels.

\--

Neil’s arrival at the rooftop doesn’t surprise Andrew, not anymore. He’s grown to expect it, expect the squeak of the door behind his back and the hand reaching out, waiting for whatever is left Andrew’s current cigarette.

It goes like that for nights; Andrew has stopped counting the nights he spent alone, and the nights Neil kept him company. He comes for a piece of silence to think, to plan without the influence of his family, to keep his thoughts rational. Then Neil arrives and all rationality flies out of the window.

Neil is consistent in almost nothing except his strange relationship with cigarettes and everything to them related. He doesn’t find any relief in them, not the way Andrew does. He doesn’t hate them either.

Neil brings a cigarette to his lips the same way he would kiss an old lover. The fire long burned out, dusted with melancholy and years of memories. Neil isn’t a smoker; the cigarettes remind him of someone who was.

“Did she smoke?” Andrew asks, because he cannot think of anyone Neil would regard with such emotion except his mother.

Neil nods, his fingers holding the stick an inch away from his mouth. He breathes the smoke in, eager before the summer night wind carries it away.

“When we were on the run, we barely stopped to buy anything. Food to last us at least a week, first aid supplies if we were hurt. Nothing that would make us stand out from regular customers. But cigarettes, she always stopped for them. It was the only thing that kept her going sometimes, I think.”

“What about you?”

Andrew’s eyes fall on Neil’s figure beside him in time to catch the slightest twitch of Neil’s muscles, tensing under his hoodie.

“I guess I don’t really consider myself to be a smoker,” Neil says and they both know that was not the question Andrew asked.

Andrew digs his thumb under Neil’s chin and turns his head, looks Neil in the eye. Neil goes slack under Andrew’s touch, a long exhale escaping his lips. Andrew curls the rest of his fingers around Neil’s throat, for the sole sake of feeling Neil’s warmth against his skin.

“Why do you want to kill your already dead mother?”

Andrew grits his teeth, drags his thumb down Neil’s adam’s apple. Neil chews on his bottom lip, waiting for either an answer or an attack. Andrew knows that at this point, Neil would accept either and Andrew draws his hand away.

“She kept Aaron and put me up for adoption, but that doesn’t mean Aaron had an ideal childhood either. She was addicted to bunch of shit, and most of it, she forced on him as well,” Andrew says, a story he’s been through a thousand times, but never out loud.

Neil frowns, his scars pulled tight. Andrew wants to touch them, smooth his palm over them, but his hand stays frozen in the air between them.

“If he disobeyed, she beat him. When she overdosed and Aaron found her, he lost it. Took a kitchen knife and stabbed her thirty-six times.”

“You want to kill her for Aaron,” Neil concludes, only because Andrew never would.

“Is this where you tell me to reconsider?”

“Why would I?” Neil asks, the surprise on his face so clear it’s refreshing. Refreshing to see any sentiment other than the hundred years old sorrow. Refreshing to see him so young.

“Because you couldn’t save yours,” Andrew says.

“My mother kept me alive, but she was far from motherly,” Neil says. “Someone once told me that her not being as bad as my father doesn’t mean she wasn’t abusive.”

“Sounds like the someone knew what they were talking about,” Andrew hums. The sun in front of them begins to rise.

“Yeah.” Neil nods, the corner of his lips curling up in a sad smile. The oranges on his face highlight his melancholy, so typical of him it puts Andrew at ease. “Yeah, he did.”

Andrew itches to ask, who planted all the feeling in Neil, who made him so entirely human, but the worlds tumble on their way to his tongue. Wanting, and especially wanting to feel, is a dangerous thing for a man like Andrew.

“Will I remember you when I come back?”

Neil isn’t smiling anymore, but the sadness seeps deeper in his features. “I don’t know. Probably not,” he says, so soft that if Andrew wasn’t inches away, he would have missed the words altogether.

“Probably not,” Andrew muses, his heart aching at Neil’s tone, aching at the look in his eyes. Centuries of longing locked up behind the endless blue. Andrew cannot stand it, cannot stand to have such look fixed on him. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil breathes out.

The kiss tastes like a goodbye. The only thing that surprises Andrew about it is how familiar it feels; how easy it comes to Neil.

He kisses like he’s been kissing Andrew goodbye for years, and he expects more. Andrew tries not to dwell on it, but he can swim in the deep waters of Neil’s sentiment for only so long before he begins to drown.

Neil doesn’t let him, pulls him above the surface, a single sigh against Andrew’s mouth.

It isn’t greedy, not the way Andrew is used to. There’s no aggression and no need for dominance, only the longing that Neil always keeps locked behind his gaze. It escapes him now, through the cracks in his self-control. It makes itself known in the press of Neil’s lips against Andrew’s and the itch in Neil’s hands, held above his head and visibly shaking when Andrew dares to look.

Andrew cannot stand any of it.

He takes a hold of Neil’s hands and doesn’t know what to do with them except to bring them to his shoulders, because Andrew wasn’t raised for gestures of affection. He wasn’t made for love and wasn’t made for holding precious things in his arms. Still, he tries.

A hand on Neil’s cheek, so light Andrew barely feels it, Andrew finally forces himself and perhaps allows himself to look. Observe the fondness hiding in the blue of Neil’s eyes, so out place when it’s directed at a man like Andrew.

Neil doesn’t move an inch.

Andrew connects the dots Neil has drawn out for him as he connects the few of Neil’s freckles, his finger shaking against the warm skin. Andrew knows and doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to be right this one time. But he knows, knows him and Neil go further back than meeting in a café shop and Neil deciding to show his world to a stranger.

“I want to remember you,” Andrew says, his throat raw.

Neil sucks in a breath, his fingers digging into Andrew’s shoulders. “I thought you wanted nothing.”

“I want nothing.”

Neil nods, the understanding washing over his face. He tilts his head up to the sky, stares at the now bright blue above them. “Won’t you ask me about time travel?”

“Not today,” Andrew says, rubbing his thumb under Neil’s eye until Neil looks at him again.

The kiss tastes like a hello. The only thing that surprises Andrew about it is how familiar it feels; like Andrew has been kissing Neil for years.

The only thing that surprises Andrew is how it easy it is; his hands on Neil’s skin and Neil sighing his name like a prayer as Andrew unravels him.

* * *

One shall not interact with past self.

* * *

_17:38:24; 260519_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

Three things people are normally not aware of, not if they aren’t focusing on it: their own breathing, their own blinking and forgetting. As Andrew sits face to face with the Future, he is hyper aware of all three at once.

Of his breathing, because in the past half an hour, her shoulders have not moved once. Of his blinking, because her eyes are full of void, forcing Andrew to look into them and nowhere else. Of forgetting, because that was his price for foolishly thinking he could win against the time.

“You know I am able to look into minds of humans?” she asks, her morphed form sending chills down Andrew’s spine. Andrew preferred as one or another, not a weird combination of two women, out of this world. Terrifying in its beauty.

“I guessed as much,” Andrew says.

She smiles and in a blink of an eye, she shifts into her grey-haired costume. “You fancy this face, I see.”

“It’s alright,” Andrew says, recognizes Neil’s attitude through his words.

“Alright?”

Andrew doesn’t humour her with an answer, but he finally tears his eyes away from hers. He stares at the coffee table in his living room, the only thing between them. The tea Andrew made has long turned cold, untouched.

“It’s been a month,” Andrew says.

A month of waiting around and forgetting, the way Neil looked sleepy and the way he looked after he woke up from a nightmare. A month of waiting, filled with the echo of maybe and the human fragility, not being able to do anything except drink yourself to sleep.

Still, to a soul ripped apart with grief, ‘maybe’ will always sound better than ‘never’.

“Patience,” she says, “Is the key to balance.”

Andrew’s jaw twitches, he feels it, and she must see it. “I’ve been patient enough.”

She nods, the gesture jerky and robotic, like she saw it somewhere and decided now is the time to try and copy it. “This isn’t about you, though. For someone who could pull the strings of time, Neil didn’t keep a very neat schedule.”

She states it as a fact, but it lands like an insult to Andrew’s ears. “He had other things to worry about.”

“You mean yourself,” she muses. “You did slow him down quite a lot. He would have done a lot more, both more good and more damage, if only he wasn’t-“

“Human.”

“Human,” she repeats, her tone final.

Her nod this time comes out naturally, and it scares Andrew how fast she adapts, grows used to her costume of a person. She stands up and offers her hand, pale and perfect.

Andrew takes it with a scowl.

He opens his eyes to a café, unfamiliar and strange. The cups on the tables are wonky, not round and not square either. The people are blurry when Andrew focuses on them, blended in with the background. It all makes Andrew’s head spin.

“Andrew,” someone says.

Andrew turns after the voice, keeps on turning because no one seems to be talking to him. People move around him and through him, all the sounds hushed. The loudest one is a clock ticking, too slow to tell a real time.

“Andrew,” comes again, urgent and frantic.

Andrew sees him then, miles away in the room. One of the blurry figures is Neil, a messed-up version of him. His hair is a wrong shade of ginger and he is taller, taller than Andrew knows him to be. Like someone tried to draw him from memory.

Andrew walks to him and when that isn’t enough, isn’t enough to seemingly close the distance, he breaks into a run.

“Neil-“

“Andrew, don’t,” Neil says, just out of reach, and disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I believe Andrew would freak the fuck out if he was to find out that this was not the first time he met Neil, but my Andrew is softer and he just - feels


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With crossed heart, certain this will be the death of him, Andrew touches Neil. He traces the scars covering Neil’s shoulders and arms, some old and some barely healed. It feels like ages pass by, the edges of the reality blurred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are going to be typos, but hey, it's 2 am and I wrote this in two weeks instead of two months

_23:49:50; 260618_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

Hidden by the darkness of the world, Andrew is a man on a mission. Time doesn’t exist behind the locked door of his bedroom, the alarm clock on his bedside table frozen. For once, Andrew’s thoughts are quiet; not gone but calm.

Illuminated by the moonlight slipping through the gap between the curtains, Neil is the single most beautiful thing Andrew has seen. He sits in the middle of Andrew’s bed, legs crossed and hands in his lap, peaceful. He observes the dark walls and whatever details he can make out without the light on.

Andrew catches him staring the book on Andrew’s desk, an old copy of Harry Potter. The only thing Andrew has kept from all of his foster houses.

“And you were sceptical towards time travel,” Neil muses.

Andrew hopes Neil can read the lack of amusement on his face. “I had my reasons.”

“Understandable.” Neil nods. “Was one of them the fact you hated me?”

Andrew draws in a deep breath and sits on his heels in front of Neil, their knees knocking together. “Lose the past tense. I still hate.”

Neil smiles. “Why am I here then?”

For that, Andrew has a simple answer. “That doesn’t mean you aren’t okay to look at.” He reaches out and tugs on the edge of Neil’s once black hoodie, faded, pooled over his thighs. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, the smile on his face replaced by his usual state of anxiety.

Andrew’s hands freeze, tangled in the fabric. “Sure?”

“Sure.”

Andrew nods and begins to pull the hoodie up, Neil’s arms raising to be at least a bit of a help. Andrew yanks the hoodie over Neil’s head, the mess of his ginger hair even messier.

“How old is this thing?” Andrew asks. He folds the hoodie, traces all the lose threads and little holes in it, just to collect himself. Just not to let his eyes wander over the bare skin, betray him.

“Some time,” Neil says.

“Why keep it then?”

“It wasn’t mine. At first.”

Andrew stops himself halfway through asking whose it was. Luckily, his tongue figures out even worse thing to say. “You can just take one of mine instead.”

Neil chuckles, not a hint of malice. Warm. “I might take you up on that.”

Andrew places the folded hoodie next to Neil’s leg and braces himself to face Neil. “Sure.”

Neil doesn’t ask out loud, but his eyes always speak for him. They give away everything he tries to hide, his fears and his own demons.

“Can I?” Andrew asks, not sure what it is that he’s asking. All he knows is that he wants, wants, _wants_.

“Yes.”

With crossed heart, certain this will be the death of him, Andrew touches Neil. He traces the scars covering Neil’s shoulders and arms, some old and some barely healed. He presses his cold fingers to Neil’s heated skin, drags his nails across it and smooths the angry white lines with his palm afterwards. He counts the scars left by the numbers until it’s too overwhelming to imagine Neil jumping back so many times, willingly or not.

Neil trembles under Andrew’s gaze and melts under his touch, arms hung by his sides. It feels like ages pass by, the edges of the reality blurred.

It is all too easy.

Andrew rests his hands just under Neil’s collarbones, hesitant and confused, all the tenderness unfamiliar. Neil covers Andrew’s hands with his own, fingers long and elegant next to Andrew’s. Andrew lets Neil to slip his fingers in between Andrew’s, the closest Andrew ever will be to holding someone’s hand. What a shame.

Andrew inhales through his nose, the sound too loud for the silent room. “It’s my turn.”

“Ask me then,” Neil says, even his breath hot where it hits Andrew’s face.

“How long you’ve been travelling?”

Neil blinks. He tears his eyes away from Andrew only to look at his arms, back at Andrew. The question cuts deeper than Andrew intended.

“Before I can even remember,” Neil says. “Before I even knew what it meant, what I was doing. My mother used to take me on trips, she called it, when we still lived with my father. After he found out, we ran away. And you know the rest.”

Andrew swears he catches his reflection in the endless blue that is Neil’s eyes. He hopes it’s the moonlight deceiving him, because he cannot stand the emotion written on his own face. He presses his hands against Neil’s skin harder, not to push him away but to anchor him.

“No one will touch you again,” Andrew says, uncharacteristic only because he spoke the words out loud.

Neil strokes the back of Andrew’s hand with his thumb, his expression unreadable. “And no one will touch you again,” Neil says, uncharacteristic only because Andrew has not admitted anything out loud.

He has been screaming it the whole time though, knives under his sleeve and at least a mile between him and the world. Andrew shouldn’t be surprised Neil knows. In a way, he isn’t.

“No,” Andrew says. It feels definite, a declaration instead of a question.

Neil smiles, just the corner of his mouth turning up. It’s enough to send Andrew chasing his lips, desperate to taste the smile before it’s gone.

Neil accepts everything Andrew has to offer, gives back twice as much. He guides Andrew’s hands down to his chest, allows Andrew to feel the lean muscle stretching over his ribcage. Andrew relishes in it, the too smooth and too rough skin, the strange marks and bumps that Andrew doesn’t dare to ask about.

It cannot be real, any of it.

Andrew breaks free from the kiss, urging air back into his lungs after Neil stole it all.

Neil doesn’t pursuit him, doesn’t ask and doesn’t push. He doesn’t move at all, his hands lightweight on Andrew’s. The strip of moonlight falls right across his face, highlights the slope of his nose and his swollen lips. Andrew’s heart aches for him, for everything that makes Neil.

Andrew aches for him and Andrew has seen the horrors of the world, but he’s never been this terrified. Want has always been a dangerous thing for a man like Andrew. Always kept on a leash, all-consuming otherwise.

Andrew digs his fingers in the spaces between Neil’s ribs and Neil reacts too late, doesn’t bite his giggle down soon enough. It ousts most of the heaviness out of Andrew’s chest, brings him back to the moment. Him and Neil in the middle of his bed, where Andrew is allowed and where he can reject.

“You are ticklish,” Andrew ponders.

“Well, don’t tickle me, asshole,” Neil mutters, the grin on his lips ruining his act. He slaps Andrew’s hand for the show, the touch so delicate Andrew would miss it if he wasn’t so aware of Neil.

“No promises.”

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

The night is forgiving towards Andrew’s past sins and mistakes, towards his shaking hand against Neil’s heart. Andrew surges forward, chases the taste of Neil that intoxicates his mind, like a drug through his veins.

Neil leans back on his elbows and Andrew follows him, hovers inches above his bare chest.

The expanse of the pale skin distracts Andrew, away from Neil’s lips as it leads him south. Neil sighs at the first press of Andrew’s lips against his throat, curses as Andrew mouths his way down Neil’s torso.

Neil has his fingers tangled in Andrew’s sheets by the time Andrew reaches the waistband of his pants.

“Yes or no?” Andrew asks, looking up.

“Yeah,” Neil says. He sucks in a harsh breath and holds it in, like he’s frantic for it to stay in his lungs forever.

Andrew counts to three and lowers himself down, good proportion of his body pressed against Neil’s legs. The contact doesn’t sting as much as Andrew expected it to. He rests his chin on the sharp jut of Neil’s hipbone, observing the storm unfold in front of him.

“Yeah. Can I touch your hair?”

Andrew huffs but mutters his consent, not sure what is amusing about Neil’s request but finding it ridiculous anyway. Neil runs an unsteady hand through Andrew’s hair and Andrew recognizes the gesture as Neil’s attempt at comforting him, as if Andrew isn’t offering.

That, too, cannot be real.

“Do you want to?” Neil asks, his thumb brushing the shell of Andrew’s ear.

“I do,” Andrew says. “Do you?”

At this, Neil chuckles, his body shaking under Andrew, jostling him along. “I do, obviously. That’s not what this is about, though.”

“What is this about, then?” Andrew asks and taps his fingers against Neil’s stomach.

“You.”

Andrew frowns, glares at Neil. He is not willing to lash out, not now, but Neil has a way of poking where he shouldn’t.

“How is this okay?” Neil urges, points to Andrew sprawled over him like Andrew could have somehow missed it. “How can you-“

Andrew himself doesn’t know. That is a lie.

“This is how.”

Neil doesn’t understand, Andrew can tell that much. He doesn’t say it, only gazes at Andrew and waits to be dismissed.

Andrew shakes head and presses his mouth to Neil’s navel, a confession if he’s ever witnessed one. Neil accepts it for what it is, Andrew’s name falling from his lips as it’s the only word he knows.

-

Andrew sits by the open window with a cigarette in his hand and the smell of Neil settled deep in his clothes, his sheets. Possibly even his hair. He observes the stillness of life in the early morning hours, when it’s too late to go to sleep and too early to be awake. The alarm clock on his bedside table ticks away seconds and then minutes, does nothing except keep Neil’s absence on his mind.

Andrew didn’t tell him to stay and Neil didn’t ask, only offered Andrew that knowing look. Considerate and nondemanding, years of acceptance spoken through a single glance before he closed the door behind himself.

Andrew hates Neil and that look. He tosses the cigarette outside and lights another, hates there isn’t anyone to steal the last few drags from him.

-

Andrew falls asleep by the time Nicky calls for lunch and wakes up to a pounding on his door. Nicky’s calling for him is urgent, different from his typical tone. Andrew is on feet in seconds, dizzy but awake.

Nicky’s face lacks colour as he looks at Andrew, eyes wide. “Andrew, they- They are fighting downstairs. I tried to stop them, but god damn-“

Andrew heads downstairs without asking who ‘they’ meant. He should have.

Aaron and Neil are two blurry figures in the living room, hard to tell apart in their furious fight. Andrew registers a nasty sound of a punch landed right, not sure who was the lucky one to receive it.

Tearing them apart proves to be difficult task. Aaron is too engrossed in the fight to care for Andrew’s presence and Neil is too big of an asshole to be the first one to step down. One of them kicks Andrew in the shin, the final straw.

Andrew grabs the front of Neil’s sweatshirt and drags him away from Aaron, kicking and punching the air.

“Enough.”

Neil’s fist stops mid-air and Andrew raises an eyebrow, challenges Neil to land it. Neil jerks his head aside, refuses to meet Andrew’s eye.

“Anyone cares to explain what the fuck is going on here?” Andrew asks, his patience wearing thin.

Aaron comes to stand beside Andrew and spits at Neil’s feet, his saliva red on the carpet. Andrew elbows him in the ribs.

“Fucker thinks he can march in here and do who he pleases,” Aaron barks out, rubs the spot where Andrew hit him.

Neil shoots him a look Andrew has seen only a couple of times, so cold it sends chills down his spine. “Andrew is more than capable of taking care of himself, so why don’t you keep your damn mouth shut the next time?”

Andrew tightens his grip on Neil’s sweatshirt and Neil gasps for air, but his eyes don’t leave Aaron and they don’t lose one bit of the threat.

“He looks at you like he wants to fucking eat you,” Aaron says, stupidly brave by Andrew’s side. “It’s disgusting.”

Andrew ignores Aaron to take a hold of Neil’s clenched jaw, digging his fingers in the bone as he forces Neil to face him. Neil drops his glaring, but his eyes remain colder than ice. Andrew doesn’t know why he expected anything different.

“Knock it off. Both of you.”

“Don’t cross my way again,” Aaron says and storms from the crime scene, shoves past Nicky in the doorway.

“I might as well!” Neil calls after him.

Andrew releases him, watches him stumble back before he regains his footing.

“Whatever is between you and Aaron is your business. But don’t drag me into it,” Andrew says.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Neil bites out and nods towards a worn out book on the coffee table. “Just brought you some quality reading.”

With that, he leaves, ignoring Nicky’s shaky goodbye.

Andrew reaches for the book and turns it in his hand, the spine falling apart and the paper yellowed. The pages are covered with different handwritings, some neat and some messy, all over the place. Andrew reads a small note at the very bottom of the first page and shuts the book closed.

-

Neil is the first one on the roof that night. He sits on the very edge, hands behind his back and head titled up towards the sky.

Andrew notices him trembling when he comes closer, although Neil pays his freezing body no mind. Andrew throws his jacket over Neil’s shoulder, watches it slip down a few inches right away. Neil startles at the contact, glances up at Andrew like he was caught stealing cookies from the jar.

“I’m not apologizing for the fight,” Neil says as Andrew sits beside him.

“Figures. Is your next plan freezing to death?”

Neil shakes head and slips his arms into the sleeves of Andrew’s jacket, his oversized hoodie bunching up underneath the tight leather. “I’m just thinking.”

“That’s a first,” Andrew says and stretches his hand out.

“It hurts,” Neil says. He passes Andrew his cigarette, barely anything of it left. “That’s why I don’t do it often.”

The laugh forces its way out of Andrew’s chest, surprises him as much as it surprises Neil. He cannot help himself.

“That’s a first,” Neil says with the tiny, lovely smile of his. The smile alone is almost enough for Andrew to forget the mess Neil leaves behind him. “Did that hurt?”

“Like a bitch.”

“I know a thing or two about that,” Neil says.

“Makes two of us,” Andrew concludes. He pulls the old book open in his lap. “Why did you give me this?”

The words wipe the smile off Neil’s face. “Did you read it?”

“Obviously.”

Neil nods, holds Andrew’s jacket closer to his chest. “It’s basically everything people have managed to gather about time travelling, from experience. I want you to know all the things that could go wrong.”

“I’m willing to take the risk,” Andrew says.

Neil sighs and lies back on the concrete, arms folded across his stomach. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

* * *

???

* * *

_08:15:05;270519_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

Andrew knocks exactly thirteen times, each knock roughing the tight skin of his knuckles a little more. Andrew relishes in it and he relishes in the swearing echoing through the air, its source behind the door.

Kevin stumbles as he yanks the door open, Andrew’s fist frozen inches away from his face. Andrew tilts his head and shoves his hand into the pocket of his jacket, studying Kevin’s slumped figure in the doorway.

Kevin looks hungover, light blue shirt wrinkled and a strange pattern pressed into his cheek. His frown is forgiving this early in the morning, the hard edges that make Kevin seem older softened by the remains of sleep.

Nostalgia is an odd feeling to accompany Kevin. It is a tiny voice in the back of Andrew’s mind whispering that Kevin was once endearing to no end, a fallen god in all his beauty and misery. He is now a dusted memory, not out of Andrew’s life but out of his reach nevertheless.

“Andrew,” Kevin grumbles, his morning breath mixed with vodka hitting Andrew’s face.

“Rise and shine,” Andrew says. He hands Kevin the paper bag full of donuts and watches Kevin’s confusion morph into disgust as he peeks inside. “We’ve got things to do.”

“What things?” Kevin asks, just the right amount of suspicion creeping into his raspy voice.

“Brush your teeth, for starters. Then, time travel.”

Andrew grabs the door knob before Kevin can shut the door closed, plays Kevin’s little tug of war. Kevin admits defeat after a curse or two and steps aside, his expression tight.

“That’s not a very nice way to welcome a friend,” Andrew muses as he strides inside, grabbing the donuts and stomping on Kevin’s socked foot for a good measure.

Kevin groans and kicks the door closed, tailing Andrew to the living room.

“You are not breathing on me,” Andrew threatens, pointer finger against Kevin’s chest instead of a knife. Some would call it an improvement.

“Fuck you,” Kevin says and blows a puff of air into Andrew’s face before he disappears off to the bathroom.

Andrew makes himself at home in the meantime, as much as possible. Kevin’s apartment is as expensive as it is soulless, the posh decoration lacking any of Kevin’s personality. Andrew catches a sight of an orange vase, the flowers inside dead, on the windowsill and throws it a mean look. He is sure Kevin hates orange.

The place is beautiful but shows nothing real; when Andrew entertains the thought, the apartment does reflect Kevin after all.

Even the sofa is far from comfortable, just another piece of furniture Kevin let someone point at in a catalogue. Andrew swings his feet up on the coffee table, the black soles of his boots leaving a black smudge on the glass.

Kevin makes his entrance halfway through Andrew’s breakfast, his hair dump and his shirt new.

“What do you want?” he asks, putting down two cups of something Andrew will hate next to Andrew’s feet.

Andrew clicks his tongue. “Time travel.”

He eyes the cup on the table, debating whenever Kevin is finally attempting to kill him. Kevin regards him with a tired glare as he sits in the leather armchair next to the window.

“It’s a tea,” Kevin says. “I even put sugar in it.”

Andrew narrows his eyes at the tea, then at Kevin. “How much?”

“Three spoons.”

“I put four,” Andrew says. “You have a shit memory.”

Kevin shakes head and sips his drink, shifting in his seat. “What do you want?” he asks again.

“To time travel,” Andrew repeats. “To save the idiot time traveller of mine.”

Kevin’s face does something complicated, the storm of emotions too fast for Andrew to understand. Kevin stares off in the distance, dragged deep into the shithole that is his head.

“I never thought I would live to hear you claiming a person,” Kevin says eventually, the statement phrased with utter care.

Andrew huffs. “I claim people all the time. Apparently, it’s called being possessive. Something to do with a past trauma.”

Kevin shakes head. “Not like this.”

“Like what?”

“You took me under your protection like a project, something to kill time with.”

Andrew recalls that. He recalls Kevin’s startled face and the edge of his sleeve dripping blood into his sink. He recalls Kevin’s tears dried on his cheeks and the tremble of his voice when he said Andrew’s name.

It was the only time Andrew knows of Kevin time travelling, to save a teammate from a nightmare Kevin himself lived. That one little trip got out of hand, forced Kevin to choose between saving his friend or dying alongside him. The memory left Kevin scarred for life, terrified to mingle with the numbers and strings of time.

Andrew didn’t believe the time travel story back then; didn’t believe it until he met Neil, because Kevin refused to write on his skin again. He did take Kevin in though, offered him a protection from his past demons for a promise of one favour. 

Now Andrew is asking Kevin to repay him, a much more than Kevin signed up for.

“And I took Neil to kill people with,” Andrew says, the words tasting bitter.

“You took Neil as an equal.”

Andrew’s throat closes.

Kevin expects a denial. He expects Andrew to lash out, fingers around his neck and a knife to his chest. Kevin expects a fight.

Andrew doesn’t feel like fighting.

“Equal maniac you mean,” Andrew says, his coverup transparent. “Which is why we need to go back and stop whatever he did.”

“That’s impossible.”

Andrew sighs and lies down on the sofa, arms under his head. “Why exactly? We go, grab him, beat some sense into him and save the day, everyone lives.”

Kevin sets his mug on the table with a frown. “Everyone except for you, right?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Kevin throws his hands in the air, brings them to his hair in frustration Andrew doesn’t find reasonable.

“I didn’t know Neil the way you did,” Kevin starts.

“I sure hope not,” Andrew cuts in. He offers a blank stare in exchange for Kevin’s glare.

“But it was enough to know that whatever he was doing in the past, it was for you. He was looking out for you maybe even more than you were looking out for him.”

Andrew jumps to his feet, his stomach upside down. He’s never been worthy of Neil, not worthy of his actions and not worthy of his strange kindness. Unworthy is a word cut into Andrew’s skin, the same way golden was written all over Neil. Perhaps Andrew was the one to write it there.

“And then you said it yourself.”

“I said what?”

“Him instead of you,” Kevin says, his face stony. He has a hard time forcing the words off his tongue, just like when he first told Andrew that he could swim through the flow of time. “If we stop him from whatever he did, you die instead. Just like in the original timeline.”

Andrew barks out an ugly laugh. “Oh, Kevin. The world is a better place for those who stay stupid.”

“Too bad.”

Andrew just stares at Kevin. He sees the fragments of care shattered through their shared time, everything he chose to overlook in the past. Kevin’s random gifts and worried glances after rough fights, always downing the first shot with Andrew and never asking what Andrew couldn’t say.

“It’s not like you to act irrationally,” Kevin says and drinks the rest of his terrible tea.

“It’s not like me to let people die because of me.”

Kevin slams the cup down on the coffee table. “I know you think no one in this world would care, but we would. We would be fucking devastated, the same way we were after Neil. Worse.”

Kevin has always cared from the side-lines, quiet and unnoticeable. Hearing his care poured into words pins Andrew against a wall. Andrew doesn’t have an answer to any of it, not one to say out loud and not one for himself. His eyes burn and he craves to be at home, to tell Neil what an idiot Kevin is being.

“I’m moved, really,” Andrew says, and the thick layer of sarcasm does nothing to conceal the truth.

“We will find another way,” Kevin concludes, stern in his determination and shaky in his belief. “There must be another way.”

-

Andrew sits on the bar stool in Kevin’s kitchen, the last of sunrays falling onto the open pages in front of him. The book Kevin gave him is torn all around, the spine coming apart and the loose threads of the binding sticking out. Andrew has already spent hours with it, reading the little notes and trying to decipher the scribbles in between the text.

For the most part, Kevin leaves him be, too busy with preparing for his interview the following day.

No matter the original source or the author, probably more than one, the book is a set of rules. Time travelling rules, does and don’ts. It must be learned from experience, full of warnings and question marks.

Some of the messages are lost for good, the ink faded or washed out by whatever was spilled onto the pages. Andrew rewrites whatever he can make out in a blank notebook, takes his time for the words to be clear. He adds in his own notes, things he remembers or was told by Neil. He writes down how the usage of coordinates is possible, allows the traveller to control his landing with perfect accuracy.

None of the previous authors mentions how they learnt their rule. Neither does Andrew.

One of the rules stands out to Andrew, written in a rush, the ink of the words smudged. ‘_One shall not interact with past self,_’ it says, pressed into the old paper with a dread. Andrew’s eyes drift to it again and again, drawn to the messy letters and the way they curved.

Andrew writes it down on a clean page in his notebook, frowns at his own handwriting. He tears the page out of the notebook and folds the paper into a thin strip, only the note visible. He lays it under the original, not sure what the comparation should reveal.

He stares at the two copies of the same sentence, the original urgent and Andrew’s neat but careless. It says nothing. Andrew drags his pen over the words, traces them until they are bold. He has always hated the way his hand drew the letter n, too round and a little different each time.

It hits Andrew then.

“Kevin!”

Kevin strides into the kitchen with three shirts in hand, each a similar shade of blue. “Yeah?”

“How did you get this?” Andrew asks, should have asked the moment Kevin passed the book to him. He cannot tear his eyes away from the note.

“That’s the funny part,” Kevin says and leans across the counter. “Remember how I told you that you can tell someone mingled with your timeline?”

“Of course,” Andrew bites out, inpatient.

“Well, this is the thing that I found. I’m sure I destroyed it a long time ago, but the other, it just- It was right there, on the coffee table. Like it was waiting.”

Andrew would ask why Kevin decided to destroy so much of knowledge given to him, would ask any other day. He barely resists the urge to punch something, or Kevin.

“I have a reason to believe that Neil borrowed it.”

Kevin throws his shirts over the second bar stool, peeking in the open book. “But-“

“I think he showed it to me in the past. It’s blurry. What I am sure of, though,” Andrew says and digs the tip of his pen in the smudged letter n. “Is that he wrote this one.”

Kevin scowls. “Are you sure?”

“I just said that.”

“No, I mean,” Kevin says and stops himself, rethinks his words. “That would mean some bad shit.”

Andrew regards him with a blank stare, although Kevin is for once correct in his assumptions. It pains Andrew to admit it.

“If we combine your crazy theory and my crazy theory,” Andrew says and shuts the book closed. “We have the answer.”

“He killed his past self,” Kevin concludes, dazed. The shock takes over him slowly, starts with the lose set of his jaw and ends with him slumping down on the bar stool, no care for his shirts. “Neil killed his past self.”

Andrew nods, spins the pen on the smooth surface of the counter. Even he can appreciate the irony of it all. He didn’t take the words of the Future literally; perhaps he should have.

“And we never knew the right Neil,” Kevin says. “But why would he write it? More importantly, how, because I doubt he had much time before he disappeared from the world.”

“It’s a clue.”

“A clue?”

“How to get in between the worlds.”

Kevin stands up and the shirts slip to the floor as he heads straight for the fridge, for the bottle of vodka Andrew has seen earlier.

“You cannot,” Kevin says, takes a sip worth of two glasses at once. “You don’t know what the between is. You don’t know if you can ever make it out. You can’t.”

“I will.”

Somewhere, perhaps in this world and maybe in another one, the Future giggles. She laughs at the human fate, decided from the very beginning, and she laughs as the despair of the human soul. Her giggle rings through the void, all the way to Andrew’s ears.

And Andrew knows, realises it like a fool - this is what she wanted all along.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me something real,” Andrew says into the heavy silence, disturbed only by the harsh raindrops beating against the window. “Not another half-truth to exchange for mine, something you actually want me to know.”
> 
> “Abram,” Neil says at last. "Nathaniel is a curse and Neil is a lie; Abram is true.”

_22:58:30;280618_

_A past time point of Andrew Minyard_

On a chilly summer night, Andrew hesitates about his own decision.

Neil holds a pen to his skin the same way Andrew would hold a blade. He isn’t scared it only because he already knows the sensation, ink bleeding into his skin and healing as a cut. The pen doesn’t make a contact with his skin this time.

On a chilly summer night, Neil doubts Andrew’s decision. The moment lasts seconds and it last the eternity, his blue eyes drowned by dread.

Andrew doesn’t blame him for having second thoughts. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, his soft spot for Neil now proving to be a sore one. Andrew would rather slice his chest open than to admit Neil has made a home inside Andrew’s ribcage, his roots so deep Andrew cannot rip him out.

Neil shudders, his worn out hoodie weak against the wind, and clicks the pen. Andrew stands beside him and watches him, a little out of breath, a little out of his mind.

“You don’t have to do this,” Andrew says.

Neil clicks the pen again and turns to Andrew. He looks older than he probably is, the burden of the time weighting down on his shoulders. The burden of Andrew’s request must be heavier.

“Why ask for my help if you chicken out the last minute?” Neil shoots Andrew’s own words at him. He grins at the glare he receives for his stupidity, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. It never does. “If you changed your mind, that’s fine. But you are a man of your word.”

Andrew craves a cigarette between his lips, to taste the nicotine on his tongue instead of curses. “Maybe I should reconsider a thing or two.”

“I agree,” Neil says. “I think orange would be a good look for you. Either hair or wardrobe.”

“I will punch you.”

Neil scrunches up his nose like he’s considering the idea. He clicks the pen again, a dead giveaway of his anxiety. “And then?”

“And then punch you again.”

Neil laughs. The sound echoes through the air, bouncing off the walls and lets itself be carried away by the wind, away from the rooftop. A fraction of it settles in Andrew’s bones, flows through his veins. Andrew loves him then.

“Can I do it?” Andrew asks, still uncertain. Terrified to death.

Neil regards Andrew with a questioning gaze, the last remains of his passing joy frozen on his lips. That look alone is enough to tell Andrew he is the first one not to do so, but to ask. It makes everything that much worse.

“Yeah,” Neil says and hands Andrew his precious pen.

Andrew presses the pen against Neil’s arm the same way he would hold a blade to his lover’s throat. He does so only because he cannot stand to watch Neil carve Andrew’s sin into his skin, forever to be reminder of Andrew’s twisted ways.

Neil sucks in a breath and doesn’t let it go, his gaze fixed on Andrew. Andrew’s free hand hovers over Neil’s chest, has its own mind. Neil takes the hint, slides his fingers through Andrew’s and rests their joined hands against his breastbone. His heartbeat is the steadiest thing Andrew has felt his whole life.

“Do it,” Neil whispers.

Andrew does. He writes each number as best as he can, as small as he can. He watches the ink settle into Neil’s skin, neat tiny numbers right under his elbow. They move on their own accord, smear into a blob of black, dancing in front of Andrew’s eyes. At last, the ink bleeds into a single line and the world disappears.

Andrew’s stomach doesn’t turn upside down and his knees don’t buckle, his vision sharp. His head spins a little, but it is a weak echo of the dizziness he used to experience at first.

He wiggles his hand free of Neil’s grip, his fingers tingling. He blames it on the change of timeline.

The wind followed them here, except it now carries dead leaves, not silent confessions. Everything around them is painted cold reds and browns, the sky grey. This time, neither complains about landing in the middle of nowhere.

“Welcome back,” Neil says, the asshole he is. “I hope to catch a glimpse of the teen you. Better than baby photos.”

Andrew scowls at the thought, but he gives Neil credit for taking his mind of the gloom floating around them.

“You will find a hotel and be bored there. I’ve got things to do.”

“What things?”

“Adult stuff.”

Neil rolls his eyes. “I’m older than you,” he says as he passes by Andrew. “Just so you know.”

“Because of the travelling?”

Neil shrugs, drowning in his huge hoodie. “Who knows.”

Andrew looks up to the sky, unconvinced. The sky frowns down at him, unhappy about his business where it doesn’t belong. Andrew doesn’t care.

-

The motel they find, at the edge of the town, reminds Andrew of Neil. The place seems to be frozen in time, unable to move forward. The parking lot is empty for the most part and the windows are dirty, dust layering on the sills. The lady at the desk doesn’t ask any questions other than the amount of nights and Neil pays her with a stack of cash he pulls out of his pocket.

The room they are given is small, the wallpaper the ugliest shade of beige Andrew has seen. It has two beds, however, each pushed sideways against a wall. Neil wanders around as Andrew talks himself down from tearing the wallpaper off.

“I’ve seen worse,” Neil concludes and slumps on one of the beds, kicking his sneakers off. “Even the warm water is running. Two stars indeed.”

Andrew knows neither of them grew up spoiled enough to know what more than two stars look like outside of photos. He turns on his heel, hand already on the door knob when Neil speaks up.

“You cannot talk to yourself. And it’s better if you don’t talk to anyone else either. The best if they don’t even see you.”

Andrew draws in a deep breath, huffs it out. “I know,” he says and jerks his hand to his chest. He throws himself onto his bed and listens to Neil talking about some sport for hours.

-

Andrew sits on an old bench, the metal biting cold to touch.

The streetlamp by the bench has long given out, years ago. Andrew had despised it each late night he had to hurry down the street, a knife clutched in his pocket. Andrew’s never been scared of the shadows in the dark; he’s terrified of those casting them.

Now, ironically enough, the broken streetlamp plays into his cards.

He watches the house across the street from under his cap, chin buried into a turtleneck that Neil lent him. The wind attacks everything in its way, brutal in its force. Multiple leaves land by Andrew’s feet and he crushes them with his boot, stomps them into the ground.

One lonely light is still on inside, illuminating the kitchen. Andrew pictures it like it’s been a day since he last saw it, the mismatched floor tiles and the broken wooden leg of the table. Aaron’s mother sitting by the table, one hand buried in dirty blonde hair and the other occupied with a cigarette.

Andrew wonders if she was the foundation for his bad habit, nicotine polluting his lungs long before he took the first drag. Andrew wonders if Aaron, before he was forced to snort his first line, felt the itch under his skin. Andrew wonders what Aaron would do if Andrew took him back as well.

Andrew dumps the thought, curses Aaron’s mother for still affecting them.

The light flickers off a little past the midnight. Andrew stays behind for another twenty minutes, although by now Aaron’s mother must be passed out in her bed, down from her high.

In the morning, Aaron will wake early and clean up her mess, pills scattered on the kitchen counter and vomit on the bathroom floor. He will stay quiet most of the morning, tiptoeing around his unstable mother.

Tomorrow, Aaron will meet Andrew for the first time. They will fight; about Aaron’s addiction and about the woman Andrew refuses to call a mother.

Exactly 13 days later, Aaron’s beloved and hated mother will drive Aaron to the school and then attempt to overdose. Except, not really.

-

Neil watches a game of something on the tv, the thing at least ten years old. The picture is grainy and glitches every now and then, the colours dull. It is enough for Neil though, who sits on the floor in his loose sweatpants and Andrew’s sweater. They traded the clothes earlier, Neil’s thick turtleneck for Andrew’s sweater with low neckline. It was Neil’s attempt at caring for others, his phrasing awkward and the exchange embarrassing at best.

Andrew shuts the door closed and his eyes drift to Neil’s relaxed figure, his bare shoulder distracting Andrew from anything not related to Neil. Andrew kicks his boots off and settles on the floor next to Neil, sitting on his frozen hands.

Neil hums. “If you need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here. The game sucks.”

Andrew shoots him a glare that Neil misses, engrossed in the men running across the field on the screen. Andrew scoots closer and lies his head on Neil’s shoulder, Neil’s skin burning hot against Andrew’s numb cheek. “If you tell anyone, I will kill you.”

“Don’t worry,” Neil says. “No one would believe me.”

“Obviously.”

Andrew closes his eyes and simply exists for once, locked away in a timeline he doesn’t belong in, with a boy he doesn’t belong to.

“Is having the last word your thing? A kink of a sort?”

Andrew stretches his leg and kicks Neil’s foot. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I would, actually, yeah,” Neil says and mutes the TV. “I’ve got some ideas, but you never know until you can confirm it.”

Andrew sighs, his brain too slow to keep up with the conversation. “Is your life so plain that your only entertainment is thinking about other people’s kinks?”

“Only you,” Neil says. “I don’t care about other people.”

Andrew snorts.

-

Neil tails after Andrew, but his steps are sure, certain of their destination. Andrew watches him from the corner of his eye, unable to catch Neil surprised at any sharp turn he makes. Andrew is self-aware enough to admit he isn’t asking only because he’s scared of the confirmation.

They reach Aaron’s house ten minutes before the young Andrew does. Andrew tells Neil as much, if only to keep other thoughts at bay.

“How do you remember the time?” Neil asks, arms folded across his chest.

Andrew digs through his pockets for the box of cigarettes, comes up empty handed. Neil notices his struggle and reaches into his own pocket, hands Andrew a cigarette on autopilot. Andrew sticks it between his lips and waits.

“I mean, I understand perfect memory as a concept, but that’s still crazy,” Neil says as he flicks the lighter and lights Andrew’s cigarette.

Andrews sucks in a long drag, welcomes the nicotine into his lungs, the bitter taste on his tongue. He holds the stick out for Neil and when Neil shakes his head, Andrew blows the smoke into his face. It doesn’t annoy Neil the way it used to.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with my memory,” Andrew says. “Some things just have been carved into my brain. Hard to forget the shit show that’s about to happen here.”

“Was it bad?”

Andrew clicks his tongue. “My turn.”

Neil shrugs, shoulders swallowed by the jacket he stopped to buy on their way here. The inside is a bright orange, a joke of sort. “Go ahead.”

“How does the travelling actually work?”

“It’s like .. Like moving your muscles. You gotta practice but then it feels natural,” Neil says, stumbling over his words. “Some people don’t even have to write the time down. They are mostly to help you focus on that point in the timeline.”

Andrew’s eyes follow the huff of smoke slipping past his lips, floating and dissolving into nothing.

“What about the scars?”

“I’m not sure. It feels like a price for not being strong enough to travel without them.” Neil sighs. “Time travel leaves you scarred either way, so it doesn’t matter much.”

“What does that mean?”

“My turn,” Neil says, attempting to mimic Andrew’s voice and failing miserably. “How did the meeting go?”

Andrew stains his eyes on the house in the distance, unkept and uncared for, haunted. “As bad as you can imagine. I met my brother and found out he was a son of an addict, addicted himself. We fought every day. When she killed herself, Aaron lost it. We met again only after Nicky got a custody of us and forced us to live under the same roof.”

Neil kicks a rock by his feet, stuffs his hands into the pockets of his terrible jacket. “What will change if you kill her instead?”

“Aaron will not find her,” Andrew says and it’s only a part truth.

Neil nods and Andrew finishes the cigarette in silence.

Andrew more feels than sees the moment he himself, young and stupid, appears in their sight. He carries a duffel bag on his shoulder, drags it with him as he drags all the misery everywhere he goes. Andrew feels it again. He feels it down his chest and deep in his bones, all the nervous anticipation, expectation of the worst to come and yet-

A tiny, tiny bit of hope.

Andrew watches himself stomp to the house. He takes a step forwards and Neil reacts faster than he does, tugs on Andrew’s sleeve to remind him of the reality.

Young Andrew stops in his tracks and stands at the porch, will for a while. Andrew shakes Neil’s grips off him and crosses the street, uncaring as Neil’s hurried steps thud behind him. Andrew isn’t stupid, not completely; he keeps his distance from his past self. He stays by the fence, hidden by the overgrown bushes. Neil catches up to him, anxious by his side.

“You can’t let him see you,” he whispers through gritted teeth, the angriest Andrew has heard him talk to him.

“I won’t,” Andrew says.

It is strangely fascinating to see himself as others saw him, his face rounder than he’s used to catching in the mirror, hair longer.

Young Andrew paces across the porch and turns his back to the door, strides down the stairs. Neil ducks down and jerks Andrew along. Andrew bats his hand away, not bothered by the touch but by Neil’s jitters. That’s what he notices it.

Andrew doesn’t believe his eyes; he doesn’t want to believe his eyes. He would be a fool if he didn’t, a complete idiot. The hoodie young Andrew is wearing lacks most of the holes, the grey one shade darker, not as washed out as Andrew recalls it.

It was one of the few pieces of clothing that Andrew used to own, oversized to hide his figure and oversized to let his injuries breathe. It was the same hoodie Andrew pulled off Neil’s body just the other night.

By the time Andrew turns to Neil, Neil’s eyes are already on him, the blue fire dulled by the guilt. As disgusting at it is, it reminds Andrew of Kevin.

“Liar,” Andrew says. The word is tattooed on Neil’s skin, over and over again. Andrew chose to ignore it for the words falling off Neil’s lips.

A few feet away from them, young Andrew curses under his breath and runs up the stairs, banging his fist against the door. Aaron is the one to open, his face a mirror to Andrew’s. Just as young, just as stupid. Andrew would hate to tell them the stupidity never goes away.

-

Andrew shuts the door right in front of Neil’s nose, doesn’t care that Neil is the one who unlocked the door. Neil stays behind the door, in the narrow hallway of the motel, as Andrew circles the room.

Andrew kicks the leg of Neil’s bed and it doesn’t make him feel any better. He all but rips Neil’s turtleneck off his body, doesn’t stop at the sound of threads tearing while he tugs the fabric over his head. He throws the piece of clothing on the floor and it only makes him feel like throwing up.

Neil chooses that moment to enter the room, his eyes drifting to Andrew and immediately to the floor when they land on a bare skin of Andrew’s torso. He closes the door with such care that Andrew almost misses the lock click. Out of his guilt and out of his annoying respect, he doesn’t dare to move an inch closer to Andrew.

He knows, perhaps, that Andrew would lash out, a wild animal seizing the opportunity to attack first. He must know; that and million other things. Everything Andrew has shared with him and forgot, memory tangles like the strings of the time. Funny how Andrew believed them to be straight lines his whole life.

Nothing is straightforward with Neil, half-truths whispered in the middle of the night, a secret for a secret. Neil has fear burnt into him and lies running through his veins, gasoline in his lungs to make up for the air stolen from him.

But Andrew has been unfair this whole time. He’s called Neil a liar without a prove, he’s called Neil selfish when his palm was open and Neil kept on giving.

Now, when Andrew has caught him in the web of deceits, he sees the thread clearly. It ties Neil and scatters around him, outside this room and outside this timeline. One of the ends leads to Andrew, twined around his pinkie finger.

Andrew now has the evidence he’s been searching for ever since he first laid his eyes on Neil. He has a valid reason to cut the string and push Neil out of the door, lock it behind him and lose the key. He knows Neil will knock on the window instead.

The closest thing in Andrew’s reach is the duvet on his bed, too thin to provide any warmth during the night. Andrew drapes it over his shoulders and holds it across his chest, the image surely ridiculous. Neil’s eyes flick to follow the sudden movement before he catches himself and drags his gaze back to the floor. Andrew appreciates the gesture as much as he hates it.

“Look all you fucking want,” Andrew says, clutches the duvet tighter in his fist. “And start spilling the truth fast, because this thing won’t keep me from tearing your tongue out of your dirty, lying mouth.”

“You said you wouldn’t ask.”

“Not the other day,” Andrew says. “I am asking today. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Neil sighs and leans his back against the door, bangs his head against the cheap wood. He shrugs off his jacket and tosses it on his bed. The sight of Andrew’s sweater on his figure irritates Andrew enough to turn on his heel and face the curtain covered window instead.

“This isn’t the first time we met,” Neil says, his voice steady. It isn’t his first time stating this, either. “You already know that.”

Andrew could yell at him. Andrew could hurt him. Instead, he asks, “What was it like? The first time we actually met?”

“You tried to kill me,” Neil says and Andrew hears the grin he must be wearing. “Well, that didn’t change. But that first time, you almost gutted me with a hockey stick when I tried to run away from everything. Hate at first sight, Kevin would say.”

“I believe I had my reasons.”

“You did and you didn’t. You didn’t trust me, and that’s why you kept me close. Forced me into your inner circle to keep an eye on me. That didn’t change either.”

Andrew cannot wrap his head around it, any of it. 

“What made me forget?”

“I did,” Neil says and the words are heavy, seeping into Andrew’s bone and weighting him down. “I went back to change something and it changed everything.”

“What did you change?” Andrew raises his voice, unable to keep the storm at the bay. He turns to Neil, unable to stay away.

“I changed my own past.”

“You said that’s impossible.”

“It is forbidden, not impossible,” Neil says. “After doing it, I realised why. That one change affected my timeline more than I thought. It affected your timeline more than I would dare to imagine.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

Neil brings his hands to his hair, runs his fingers through the tangled mess of curls. “We were supposed to meet this spring. You were supposed to come to deck me and we were supposed to hate each other until it faded out into something else.”

“And?”

“When it didn’t happen, I just found you on my own.”

“How selfish of you,” Andrew says and he means every syllable.

“I am the most selfish person you know,” Neil says, as one would admit to their sins.

Andrew shakes his head and throws the duvet on the empty mattress of his bed. With a visible distaste he picks up the clothing he so dramatically tore off. Neil adverts his gaze as Andrew dresses and he takes a step aside without being asked, allowing Andrew to leave without any fuss.

Andrew doesn’t bother with a goodbye or a promise of his return, doesn’t bother with closing the door or looking back. Wandering without a direction is a hard task for someone who knows the neighbourhood like the back of his hand, so Andrew heads in the opposite way. Away from Neil and further away from the house that might as well be labelled the hell.

Neil’s words ring in his ears, first and supposed on repeat like a broken record. Andrew cannot remember and yet it feels like he didn’t forget, couldn’t forget completely. Neil was hiding under Andrew’s skin before Andrew accepted his hand in the alley behind the café, lived in Andrew’s chest long before Andrew knew the stone was guarding, not making up his heart.

Andrew winds up at a seemingly abandoned playground, the metal of the fence rusted and the swing squeaking under Andrew’s weight. He lights a cigarette only to crush it under his feet, the joy of nicotine finally ruined by its linking to the ginger haired boy.

Andrew hates Neil then. He stares at his bright red hands and only sees the string tied to his finger. He can almost feel it, the pull of wool against the skin and the heaviness of a knot. Andrew has always been good with knives, a blade in his grip since he was six. None of his knives are sharp enough to cut him free of Neil.

Andrew tilts his head up to the sky, the dark grey clouds promising rain, threatening with a storm. He welcomes the first drops of water in his hair, running down his face. He welcomes the first echo of the thunder, the first flash of the lightning.

By the time Andrew stands on his feet again, it is pouring, the sky crying at his rage. Andrew welcomes all of it, the ugly and the scary. He welcomes the madness. After all, he must be mad to return to Neil, a storm trapped in a human body.

-

Andrew isn’t a creature of regret and Neil isn’t a creature of guilt. Andrew knocks on the door, soaked head to toe, hair sticking to his forehead and his boots dripping on the carpet in the hall. Neil opens within a heartbeat, like he’s been sitting at the other side of the door this whole time.

He might have.

Andrew pushes past him without a word, their shoulders brushing and Andrew’s wet trace following him inside. He heads straight to the bathroom and locks the door, although not a single bone in his body believes Neil would dare to enter. Ironic.

His soaked clothes pile on the floor and Andrew steps in the shower, savours the warm water hitting his body instead of the cool raindrops.

He isn’t sure how much time passes. Time is a concept Andrew doesn’t believe in anymore; time is a concept made up by man who’s never seen ink cut into skin. Andrew stands under the water until it scalds his shoulders and then some more.

Neil knocks on the door, raising his voice only to be heard over the running water. “There’s clothes left behind the door.”

Andrew’s fist connects with the wall, a mere press of his knuckles against the slippery tile if anything.

Said clothes include Andrew’s sweater and pair of sweatpants, too long for Andrew’s legs. He wears them nevertheless. He doesn’t comprehend where Neil got them. The two of them were stupid enough not to take anything with them to their three days trip. He tells Neil that much.

“I jumped back and bought them,” Neil replies.

Andrew wants to punch him then. Two more lines on Neil’s skin, unnecessary, pointless. Two more lines on Neil’s skin because Andrew wandered around in the rain.

“Idiot,” Andrew says, and neither of them know if he’s addressing Neil or himself.

Andrew sits on the edge of his bed and stares at his bare feet, the material of the sweatpants pooling at his ankles. Neil settles on the floor, back against the wall as he draws his bended legs to his chest. He rests his chin on his knees, impossibly small in the cramped motel room. A strange, strange part of Andrew wants to drag a blanket around his shoulders and tell him things are okay.

Andrew isn’t a liar and so he doesn’t.

“Tell me something real,” Andrew says into the heavy silence, disturbed only by the harsh raindrops beating against the window. “Not another half-truth to exchange for mine, something you actually want me to know.”

Neil sucks in a shaky breath, the same way he would chase the cigarette smoke off Andrew’s mouth. He hugs his legs, squeezes them to appear even smaller.

“Abram,” Neil says at last. “It’s my middle name.”

“What about it?” Andrew asks.

“Neil is a name I chose for myself because I have been named by my father. I don’t want to be associated with him, much less called after him. Nathaniel is a curse and Neil is a lie; Abram is true.”

Andrew nods, can understand that reasoning. He turns the name in his head multiple times, but his teeth won’t let it pass them.

Neil reaches into his pocket and fishes out his ancient phone, tossing it in Andrew’s unexpecting arms. He catches the device nonetheless, his reflexes paying attention even when he doesn’t.

“What,” Andrew says, not even a question.

“Take the battery out,” Neil says, as cryptic as ever.

Andrew, for once, does as he’s told. He plugs the battery out of the damn thing and offers Neil a blank stare.

“Look closely.”

Andrew almost rolls his eyes, but the gesture reminds him of Neil too much. Instead, he inspects the device closer, the scratched screen and rubbed off layer of paint. Neil waits for him to find it, all the patience in the world. Andrew does find it, on the underside of the battery. It is a single word written in a black permanent marker, ‘Abram’ in a neat cursive.

‘Abram’ in Andrew’s neat cursive.

“To make the clock work around us, we-“

“Have to make them undeniably yours,” Andrew finishes for him. At Neil’s confused look, he throws an off-handed, “Kevin.”

“I’m surprised he told you,” Neil admits, possibly because of the version of Kevin he used to know.

“His watch has his name carved on it; I told him it was pretentious. Simply sign it and that’s it, that’s the big secret.”

Neil shakes head at that. “It is not that simple.”

“How come? I’ve been told I would never understand.”

A chuckle slips past Neil’s lips, like he couldn’t keep it in. He clears his throat and scolds his expression into a blank canvas. “I don’t know what’s Kevin’s deal, but I can tell you mine.”

Andrew gestures for him to go ahead, a lazy wave of his hand.

“I tried, multiple times, to make it work for me. Signed watches and thought it would work, but it never did. Then you gave me this phone.”

Andrew doesn’t comment on it, keen to observe the emotion drowning in Neil’s guarded gaze.

“That didn’t work either. After I gave you Abram, you told me I was stupid. That it was that name that was supposed to keep me down on earth. I told you it only grounded me when you said it. So, you bitched about how you were not the answer to my problems, but signed the phone anyway.”

“And?” Andrew asks, like there is a plot twist coming.

There isn’t.

“You were the answer.”

* * *

An inanimate objects can be brought with one through the flow of time.

* * *

_12:47:05;300519_

_The current time point of Andrew Minyard_

Andrew wakes hungover, head pounding and vision black as he sits. He attempts to blink it away, falls back onto the sheets as it persists. The cat rubs against his bare ankles and Andrew hushes it away.

His eyes get used to the light slowly, way too slowly, the sight in front of him blurry at the edge. Andrew wouldn’t think twice about a hungover, if there was a drop of alcohol in his system the during the past three days.

Andrew is able to read again late that afternoon. He reads the notes of the time travel notebook like they could have hidden something the first million times he’s read them. Most of them are repeated or updated already existing rule, some of them are written in languages Andrew doesn’t know – doesn’t even recognize. The internet translates them as bunch of nonsense, a string of words tied together for no apparent reason.

One of the notes draws Andrew’s attention, however, rushed words onto the bottom of the page. Andrew has already copied it into his own textbook before. He writes it again.

Kevin shows his face late, after his team practice and extra two hours to assure everyone he stays the best player on the team.

“I have brought you a dinner,” Kevin says and places a plastic container full of greens on Andrew’s table. “Here.”

Andrew regards the box with an appropriate amount of disgust. “Where’s the dinner?”

“The salad is the dinner.”

“What the fuck. No.”

Kevin groans, long and tired. He pushes the container towards Andrew and Andrew pushes it back, a childish game.

Kevin admits defeat and eats the salad himself, doesn’t spare Andrew any detail about the current developments in his team. Andrew doesn’t listen to him, never does. He writes the note down again.

“Neil could have just told you what the hell that means,” Kevin mutters. “Would have saved us the trouble.”

Andrew stares at the words. They talk to him, scream even – but he remains deaf to them. ‘_One shall not interact with past self’._

“Neil told me that you cannot change your own past,” Andrew says. “Why?”

“It messes with your head. If you change your own past, you remember the old timeline and the alternative as well. They start blending into each other and you cannot tell them apart, it messes up your head.”

“We changed my timeline though, and I remember both.”

Kevin chokes on his salad, spits it back into the container. Andrew adverts his eyes.

“That .. That doesn’t and doesn’t make sense,” Kevin says.

“How come?”

“You aren’t time traveller yourself, but you went back and changed your timeline.”

Andrew shrugs. He reaches out and snatches the container from Kevin, throws it to the trash before Kevin can attempt to finish the devil’s meal.

“How does that help us?” Kevin asks, rolling the fork between his fingers.

“Isn’t that obvious? We go back and talk to my past self.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chap is all emotion and discovery, so next chap we k*ll  
Anygay here's the playlist that keeps me going, all the vibes in this fic are based on these great songs:  
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6cJlPUyV951kpI2gKhh4dq?si=xf0wh7aDTBGDRHYeTr4FOA

**Author's Note:**

> Anygay here's the playlist that keeps me going, all the vibes in this fic are based on these great songs:  
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6cJlPUyV951kpI2gKhh4dq?si=xf0wh7aDTBGDRHYeTr4FOA


End file.
